NRLF 


117    ShD 


THE   LAND'S   END 


IN    THE    HARBOUR,   ST.    IVES 


Frontispiece 


THE    LAND'S   END 


A   NATURALIST'S   IMPRESSIONS 
IN   WEST   CORNWALL 


BY 

W.    H.    HUDSON 


WITH    FORTY-NINE    ILLUSTRATIONS    BY 
A.    L.    COLLINS 


OF 


UNiVERSfl-X  :»  ;::V:::;:v;l; 
OF**  •   Jr- "   ».•:•.:•::: 

> 


NEW  YORK 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

1908 


u 


GENERAL 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTKR  PAGI 

I.  WINTERING  IN  WEST  CORNWALL  .  .'        i 

II.  GULLS  AT  ST.  IVES  .                 .  .  .       19 

III.  CORNWALL'S  CONNEMARA          .  .  .       29 

IV.  OLD  CORNISH  HEDGES              .  39 

V.  BOLERIUM  I     THE    END    OF    ALL   THE  LAND  .          50 

VI.  CASTLES  BY  THE  SEA                 .  .  .       63 

VII.  THE  BRITISH  PELICAN               .  .  .       74 

VIII.  BIRD  LIFE  IN  WINTER              .  .  .       89 

IX.  THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  FARMS  .  .  .     102 

X.  AN  IMPRESSION  OF  PENZANCE  .  .  .121 

XI.  MANNERS  AND  MORALS             .  .  .     135 

XII.  CORNISH  HUMOUR     .  ...     153 

XIII.  THE  POETIC  SPIRIT  .                .  .     179 

XIV.  WINTER  ASPECTS  AND  A  BIRD  VISITATION  .     204 
XV.  A  GREAT  FROST       .                 .  .  .222 

XVI.  A  NATIVE  NATURALIST             .  .  .     240 

XVII.  THE  COMING  OF  SPRING           .  .  .261 
XVIII.  SOME  EARLY  FLOWERS               .  .  .275 

XIX.  THE  FURZE  IN  ITS  GLORY        .  .  .     293 

XX.  PILGRIMS  AT  THE  LAND'S  END  .  .     303 

INDEX         .                 .                .  .  .     319 


192696 


ABOUT  a  fourth  part  of  the  matter  contained  in  this  volume 
has  appeared  in  the  Saturday  Review  and  the  Speaker,  and  I 
am  obliged  to  the  editors  of  those  journals  for  their  per- 
mission to  use  it  here. 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


IN  THE  HARBOUR,  ST.  IVES 

BOATS  AT  ST.  IVES 

COURT  COCKING,  ST.  IVES 

GOSSIPS 

AN  OLD  STREET  IN  ST.  IVES 

JACKDAWS 

GULLS  AT  ST.  IVES 

A  CORNISH   FISHERMAN 

GULLS  AT  ST.  IVES 

FISHERMEN 

IVY  ON  ROCKS  . 

A  CORNISH  STILE 

STONE  HEDGE   . 

HEDGE  AT  ST.  IVES 

NEAR  LAND'S  END 

LAND'S  END      . 

FISHERMEN 

THE  LOGAN  ROCK 

GURNARD'S  HEAD 

GURNARD'S  HEAD 

GULLS  ON  THE  ROCKS 

DONKEYS  ON  THE  MOOR    . 

PEOPLE  AT  THE  FARM 

THE  CORNISH  CELT 


PAGE 

Frontispiece 


4 
9 

•  13 

•  17 
.       19 

21 

Facing  page  22 

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.       29 

.       32 

•  39 

•  47 
5°»  53 

Facing  page  58 

.     .    63 
.     .    69 

Facing  page  70 

.        74 

.         .       89 

Facing  page  92 

.      102 

1 06 


VII 


Vlll 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


CORNISH  FARM-HOUSE 

CORNISH  FARM-HOUSES 

PENZANCE 

MARKET  JEW  STREET 

NEWLYN 

MOUSEHOLE 

SMALL  FARM     . 

CORNISH  PEASANT 

CORNISH  WOMAN 

NORWAY  LANE,  ST.  IVES 

STILE  AT  SENNEN 

CORNISH  LABOURER 

ROCKS  AT  ZENNOR 

OLD  HOUSES,  ST.  IVES 

ZENNOR 

ZENNOR 

SANDHILLS 

CORMORANTS 

CARTING  BRACKEN 

FURZE 

SENNEN  COVE     . 

OLD  FARM,  LAND'S  END 

NEAR  SENNEN  COVE 

ROCKS  AT  LAND'S  END 


Facing  page  1 1 4 
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•  H3 

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%.         .161 

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.  179 
.  191 
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.  213 

.       222 

Facing  page  224 
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.  261 
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.  293 
.  303 

Facing  page  304 
.  309 
.  317 


THE  LAND'S 


CHAPTER  I 
WINTERING    IN    WEST   CORNWALL 

England's  "  obscrvables "— Why  I  delayed  visiting  Cornwall— A 
vision  of  the  Land's  End — Flight  to  St.  Ivcs — Climate — The 
old  town — The  fishermen — Their  Jove  of  children — Drowned 
babes — The  fishing  fleet  going  out  at  sunset — Old  memories  sug- 
gested— Jackdaws  at  St.  Ives — Feeding  the  birds — A  greedy 
sheep-dog — Daws  show  their  intelligence — Daws  on  the  roofs — 
Their  morning  pastime — Dialogue  between  two  daws. 

NOW,"  said  wise  old  Fuller,  « most  of  the 
rooms  of  thy  native  country  before  thou 
goest  over  the  threshold  thereof.  Especially 
seeing  England  presents  thee  with  so  many  observ- 
ables."  But  if  we  were  to  follow  this  advice  there 
would  be  no  getting  out  of  the  country  at  all.  It  is 
too  rich  in  its  way  :  the  rooms  are  too  many  and  too 
well-furnished  with  observables.  Take  my  case.  I 
have  been  going  on  rambles  about  the  land  for  a  good 
many  years,  and  though  the  West  Country  had  the 


2  THE   LAND'S   END 

greatest  attraction  for  me,  I  never  got  over  the  Tamar, 
nor  even  so  far  as  Plymouth,  simply  because  1  had 
not  the  time,  albeit  my  time  was  my  own.  Or  be- 
cause there  was  enough  and  more  than  enough  to 
satisfy  me  on  this  side  of  the  boundary.  It  is  true 
that  one  desires  to  see  and  know  all  places,  but  is  in  no 
hurry  to  go  from  a  rich  to  a  poor  one.  I  was  told  by 
every  one  of  my  friends  that  it  was  the  most  interest- 
ing county  in  England,  and  doubtless  it  is  so  to  them, 
but  I  knew  it  could  not  be  so  to  me  because  of  the 
comparative1  poverty  of  the  fauna,  seeing  that  the 
observables  which  chiefly  draw  me  are  the  living 
creatures — the  wild  life — and  not  hills  and  valleys  and 
granite  and  serpentine  cliffs  and  seas  of  Mediterranean 
blue.  These  are  but  the  setting  of  the  shining  living 
gems,  and  we  know  the  finest  of  these,  which  gave 
most  lustre  to  the  scene,  have  been  taken  out  and 
cast  away. 

Cornwall  to  me  was  just  the  Land's  End — "  dark 
Bolerium,  seat  of  storms  " — that  famous  foreland  of 
which  a  vast  but  misty  picture  formed  in  childhood 
remains  in  the  mind,  and  if  I  ever  felt  any  strong 
desire  to  visit  Cornwall  it  was  to  look  upon  that 
scene.  Then  came  a  day  in  November,  1905,  when, 
having  settled  to  go  away  somewhere  for  a  season,  I  all 
at  once  made  up  my  mind  to  visit  the  unknown  pen- 
insula and  to  go  straight  away  to  the  very  end.  It 
almost  astonished  me  when  I  alighted  from  my  train 
at  St.  Ives  to  think  I  had  travelled  three  hundred  and 
twenty  odd  miles  with  less  discomfort  and  weariness 
than  I  usually  experience  on  any  journey  of  a  hundred. 


WINTERING    IN   WEST   CORNWALL     3 

It  is  common,  I  think,  for  lovers  of  walking  to  dislike 
the  railway.  So  smoothly  had  I  been  carried  in  this 
flight  to  the  furthest  west  that  I  might  have  been 
sailing  in  a  balloon  ;  and  as  for  the  time  occupied  it 
would  surely  be  no  bad  progress  for  a  migrating  bird, 
travelling,  let  us  say,  from  Middlesex  to  Africa,  to 
cover  the  distance  I  had  come  in  a  little  more  than 
seven  hours  ! 

St.  Ives  is  on  the  north  side  of  the  rounded  western 
extremity  of  Cornwall,  and  from  the  little  green  hill, 
called  the  "  Island,"  which  rises  above  and  partly 
shelters  the  town,  you  look  out  upon  the  wide  Atlan- 
tic, the  sea  that  has  always  a  trouble  on  it  and  that 
cannot  be  quiet ;  and  standing  there  with  the  great 
waves  breaking  on  the  black  granite  rocks  at  your 
feet,  they  will  tell  you  that  there  is  no  land  between 
you  and  America.  Nevertheless,  after  London,  I 
wanted  no  better  climate  ;  for  though  it  rained 
heavily  on  many  days  in  December  and  the  wind 
blew  with  tremendous  force,  the  temperature  was 
singularly  mild,  with  an  agreeable  softness  in  the  air 
and  sunshine  breaking  out  on  the  cloudiest  days. 
The  weather  could  be  described  as  "  delicate "  with 
tempestuous  intervals.  On  bright,  windless  days  I 
saw  the  peacock  butterfly  abroad  and  heard  that  idle 
song  of  the  corn  bunting,  associated  in  our  minds 
with  green  or  yellow  fields  and  sultry  weather.  I  was 
still  more  surprised  one  day  late  in  December  at 
meeting  with  a  lively  wheatear,  flitting  from  stone  to 
stone  near  the  Land's  End.  This  one  had  discovered 
that  it  was  not  necessary  to  fly  all  the  way  to  North 


4  THE   LAND'S   END 

Africa  to  find  a  place  to  winter  in.    Early  in  February 
I  found  the  adder  abroad. 

The  town,  viewed  from  the  outside — the  old  fish- 
ing   town,    which    does    not    include    the    numerous 


COURT    COCKING,    ST.    IVES 


villas,  terraces,  and  other  modern  erections  on  the 
neighbouring  heights — appears  very  small  indeed.  It 
is  small,  for  when  you  once  master  its  intricacies  you 
can  walk  through  from  end  to  end  in  about  five  or 


WINTERING    IN   WEST   CORNWALL     5 

six  minutes.  But  the  houses  are  closely  packed,  or 
rather  jumbled  together  with  the  narrowest  and  crook- 
edest  streets  and  courts  in  which  to  get  about  or  up 
and  down.  They  have  a  look  of  individuality,  like  a 
crowd  of  big  rough  men  pushing  and  elbowing  one 
another  for  room,  and  you  can  see  how  this  haphazard 
condition  has  come  about  when  you  stumble  by  chance 
on  a  huge  mass  of  rock  thrusting  up  out  of  the  earth 
among  the  houses.  There  was,  in  fact,  just  this  little 
sheltered  depression  in  a  stony  place  to  build  upon, 
and  the  first  settlers,  no  doubt,  set  their  houses  just 
where  and  how  they  could  among  the  rocks,  and  when 
more  room  was  wanted  more  rocks  were  broken  down 
and  other  houses  added  until  the  town  as  we  find  it 
resulted.  It  is  all  rude  and  irregular,  as  if  produced 
by  chance  or  nature,  and  altogether  reminds  one  of  a 
rabbit  warren  or  the  interior  of  an  ants*  nest. 

It  cannot  be  nice  to  live  in  such  a  warren  or  rook- 
ery, except  to  those  who  were  born  in  it  ;  nevertheless 
it  is  curiously  attractive,  and  I,  although  a  disliker  of 
towns  or  congeries  of  houses,  found  a  novel  pleasure 
in  poking  about  it,  getting  into  doorways  and  chance 
openings  to  be  out  of  the  way  of  a  passing  cart  which 
as  a  rule  would  take  up  the  whole  width  of  the  street. 
Outside  the  houses  hung  the  wet  oilskins  and  big  sea- 
boots  to  dry,  and  at  the  doors  women  with  shawls 
over  their  heads  stand  gossiping.  When  the  men  are 
asleep  or  away  and  the  children  at  school  these  appear 
to  be  the  only  inhabitants,  except  the  cats.  You  find 
one  at  every  few  yards  usually  occupied  with  the 
head  of  a  mackerel  or  herring.  The  appearance  was 


6  THE   LAND'S   END 

perhaps  even  better  by  night  when  the  narrow 
crooked  ways  are  very  dark  except  at  some  rare  spot 
where  a  lamp  casts  a  mysterious  light  on  some  quaint 
old  corner  building  and  affords  a  glimpse  into  a  dimly- 
seen  street  beyond  ending  in  deep  gloom. 

In  this  nest  or  hive  are  packed  about  eight  hundred 
fishermen  with  their  wives  and  children,  their  old 
fathers  and  mothers,  and  other  members  of  the  com- 
munity who  do  not  go  in  the  boats.  The  fishermen 
are  the  most  interesting  in  appearance  ;  it  is  a  relief, 
a  positive  pleasure  to  see  in  England  a  people  clothed 
not  in  that  ugly  dress  which  is  now  so  universal,  but 
in  one  suitable  to  their  own  life  and  work  —  their 
ponderous  sea-boots  and  short  shirt-shaped  oilies  of 
many  shades  of  colour  from  dirty  white  and  pale 
yellow  to  deep  reds  and  maroons.  In  speech  and 
manners  they  are  rough  and  brusque,  and  this,  too, 
like  their  dress  and  lurching  gait,  comes,  as  it  were, 
by  nature  ;  for  of  all  occupations,  this  of  wresting  a 
poor  and  precarious  livelihood  from  the  wind- vexed 
seas  under  the  black  night  skies  in  their  open  boats  is 
assuredly  the  hardest  and  most  trying  to  a  man's 
temper.  The  navvy  and  the  quarryman,  the  labourer 
on  the  land,  here  where  the  land  is  half  rock,  even 
the  tin-miner  deep  down  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth, 
have  a  less  di  scorn  for  table  and  anxious  life.  That 
they  are  not  satisfied  with  it  one  soon  discovers  ; 
Canada  calls  them,  and  Africa,  and  other  distant 
lands,  and  unhappily,  as  in  most  places,  it  is  always 
the  best  men  that  go.  Possibly  this  accounts  for  the 
change  for  the  worse  in  the  people  which  some  have 


WINTERING   IN   WEST   CORNWALL     7 

noted  in  recent  years.  Nevertheless  they  are  a  good 
people  still,  righteous  in  their  own  peculiar  way,  and 
so  independent  that  in  bad  times,  as  when  the  fishing 
fails,  hunger  and  cold  are  more  endurable  to  them  than 
charity.  They  are  a  clannish  people,  and  it  is  conse- 
quently not  to  be  wondered  at  that  they  have  no  sub- 
scription clubs  or  friendly  societies  of  any  kind  to  aid 
them  in  times  of  want  and  sickness  such  as  are  now 
almost  universal  among  the  working  classes.  These 
benefits  of  our  civilisation  will  doubtless  come  to 
them  in  time  :  then  their  clannishness — the  old  "  One 
and  All "  spirit  of  Cornishmen  generally — being  no 
longer  needed,  will  decay.  It  is  after  all  but  another 
word  for  solidarity,  the  strong,  natural,  or  family 
bond  which  unites  the  members  of  a  community 
which  was  once,  in  ruder  ages,  everywhere,  to  make 
social  life  possible,  and  has  survived  here  solely 
because  of  Cornwall's  isolated  position.  Unfortu- 
nately we  cannot  make  any  advance — cannot  gain 
anything  anywhere  without  a  corresponding  loss 
somewhere.  Will  it  be  better  for  this  people  when 
the  change  comes — when  the  machine  we  call  "  civili- 
sation "  has  taken  the  place  of  the  spirit  of  mutual 
help  in  the  members  of  the  community  ?  'Tis  an 
idle  question,  since  we  cannot  have  two  systems  of 
life.  At  present,  in  our  "  backward "  districts,  we 
have  two,  but  they  are  in  perpetual  conflict,  and  one 
must  overcome  the  other  ;  and  if  there  be  any  beauti- 
ful growths  in  the  old  and  unfit,  which  is  passing 
away,  they  must  undoubtedly  perish  with  it. 

One  of  the   most   pleasing  traits  of  the   Cornish 


8  THE   LAND'S    END 

people,  which  is  but  one  manifestation  of  the  spirit  1 
have  been  speaking  about,  is  their  love  for  little 
children.  Nowhere  in  the  kingdom,  town  or  country, 
do  you  see  a  brighter,  happier,  better-dressed  company 
of  small  children  than  here  in  the  narrow  stony  ways 
of  the  old  fishing  town.  The  rudest  men  exhibit  a 
strange  tenderness  towards  their  little  ones  ;  and  not 
only  their  own,  since  they  regard  all  children  with  a 
kind  of  parental  feeling.  An  incident  which  occurred 
in  the  early  part  of  December,  and  its  effects  on  the 
people,  may  be  given  here  as  an  illustration.  One 
morning  when  the  boats  came  in  it  was  reported  that 
one  of  the  men  had  been  lost.  "  Poor  fellow  !  "  was 
all  that  was  said  about  it.  And  that  is  how  it  is  all 
the  world  over  among  men  who  have  dangerous  occu- 
pations :  the  loss  of  a  comrade  is  a  not  uncommon 
experience,  and  the  shock  is  very  slight  and  quickly 
vanishes.  But  there  was  no  such  indifference  when, 
two  or  three  days  later,  one  of  the  herring-boats 
brought  in  the  corpse  of  a  small  child  which  had  been 
fished  up  in  the  Bay — a  pretty  little  well-nourished 
boy,  decently  dressed,  aged  about  two  years  and  a  half. 
Where  the  child  belonged  and  how  it  came  to  be  in 
the  sea  was  not  discovered  until  long  afterwards,  but 
the  intensity  of  the  feeling  displayed  was  a  surprise 
to  me.  For  several  days  little  else  was  talked  of 
both  in  St.  Ives  and  the  villages  and  farms  in  the 
neighbourhood,  and  they  talked  of  it,  both  men  and 
women,  with  tears  in  their  voices  as  though  the  death 
of  this  unknown  child  had  been  a  personal  loss. 

This  incident  served  to  recall  others,  of  St.  Ives 


WINTERING    IN  WEST   CORNWALL     9 

children  lost  and  drowned  in  past  years,  especially 
this  very  pathetic  one  of  three  little  things  who  went 
out  to  pick  flowers  one  afternoon  and  were  lost. 
They  were  two  sisters,  aged  eight  and  nine  respec- 
tively, and  their  little  brother,  about  six  or  seven 


GOSSIPS 


years  old.  They  rambled  along  the  rough  heath  by 
Carbis  Bay  to  the  Towans,  near  Lelant,  where,  climb- 
ing about  among  the  sand-hills,  they  lost  all  sense  of 
direction.  There  meeting  a  man  who  spoke  roughly 
to  them  and  ordered  them  home  they  became  terrified 
and  ran  away  to  the  sea-front,  and,  climbing  down  the 


io  THE   LAND'S   END 

cliff,  hid  themselves  in  a  cave  they  found  there.  By 
and  by  it  began  to  grow  dark,  and  there  were  sounds 
above  as  of  loud  talking  and  shouts  and  of  a  galloping 
horse,  all  which  added  to  their  fear  and  caused  them 
to  go  further  into  their  dark  wet  house  of  refuge. 
They  did  not  know,  poor  children,  that  the  cries 
were  uttered  by  those  who  were  seeking  for  them  ! 
After  dark  the  tide  rose  and  covered  the  sandy  floor 
of  the  cave,  and  to  escape  it  they  climbed  on  to  a  rocky 
shelf  where  they  could  keep  dry,  and  there  huddled 
together  to  keep  warm,  and  being  very  tired,  they 
eventually  fell  asleep.  In  the  morning  when  it  grew 
light  the  sisters  woke,  stiff  and  cold,  to  find  that  their 
poor  little  brother  had  fallen  from  the  ledge  in  his  sleep 
and  had  been  carried  out  by  the  sea.  His  body  was 
recovered  later.  The  two  survivors,  now  middle-aged 
women,  still  live  in  the  town. 

The  most  interesting  hour  of  the  day  at  St.  Ives 
was  in  the  afternoon  or  evening,  the  time  depending 
on  the  tide,  when  the  men  issued  from  their  houses 
and  came  lurching  down  the  little  crooked  stone 
streets  and  courts  to  the  cove  or  harbour  to  get  the 
boats  out  for  the  night's  fishing.  It  is  a  very  small 
harbour  in  the  corner  of  the  bay — a  roughly  shaped 
half-moon  with  two  little  stone  piers  for  horns,  with 
just  room  enough  inside  to  accommodate  the  fleet  of 
about  1 50  boats.  The  best  spectacle  is  when  they  are 
taken  out  at  or  near  sunset  in  fair  weather,  when  the 
subdued  light  gives  a  touch  of  tenderness  and  mystery 
to  sea  and  sky,  and  the  boats,  singly,  in  twos  and 
threes,  and  in  groups  of  half  a  dozen,  drift  out  from 


WINTERING    IN   WEST   CORNWALL    n 

the  harbour  and  go  away  in  a  kind  of  procession  over 
the  sea.  The  black  forms  on  the  moving  darkening 
water  and  the  shapely  deep-red  sails  glowing  in  the 
level  light  have  then  a  beauty,  an  expression,  which 
comes  as  a  surprise  to  one  unaccustomed  to  such  a 
scene.  The  expression  is  due  to  association — to  vague 
suggestions  of  a  resemblance  in  this  to  other  scenes. 
We  may  be  unable  to  recall  them ;  the  feeling  returns 
but  without  the  mental  image  of  the  scene  which 
originally  produced  it.  It  was  not  until  I  had  watched 
the  boats  going  out  on  two  or  three  successive  evenings 
that  an  ancient  memory  returned  to  me. 

Sitting  or  walking  by  the  margin  of  some  wide 
lake  or  marsh  in  a  distant  land,  I  am  watching  a  com- 
pany of  birds  of  some  large  majestic  kind — stork, 
wood-ibis,  or  flamingo — standing  at  rest  in  the  shallow 
water,  which  reflects  their  forms.  By  and  by  one  of 
the  birds  steps  out  of  the  crowd  and  moves  leisurely 
away,  then,  slowly  unfolding  his  broad  wings,  launches 
himself  on  the  air  and  goes  off,  flying  very  low  over 
the  water.  Another  follows,  then,  after  an  interval, 
another,  then  still  others,  in  twos  and  threes  and  half- 
dozens,  until  the  last  bird  has  opened  his  wings  and 
the  entire  flock  is  seen  moving  away  in  a  loose  pro- 
cession over  the  lake. 

Just  in  that  way  did  the  crowd  of  boats  move  by 
degrees  from  their  resting-place,  shake  out  their 
wing-like  sails,  and  stream  away  over  the  sea. 

That  was  one  scene  ;  there  were  faint  suggestions 
of  many  others,  only  a  few  of  which  I  could  recover  ; 
one  was  of  large,  dark  red-winged  butterflies,  seen  at 


12  THE   LAND'S   END 

rest  with  closed  wings,  congregated  on  wind-swayed 
reeds  and  other  slender  plants.  It  was  the  shape  and 
deep  red  colour  of  the  sails  and  the  way  they  hung 
from  the  masts  and  cordage  which  restored  this 
butterfly  picture  to  my  mind.  And  in  every  instance 
in  which  a  resemblance  could  be  traced  it  turned  out 
to  be  to  some  natural  and  invariably  to  a  beautiful 
object  or  scene.  The  spectacle  had,  in  fact,  that 
charm,  which  is  so  rare  in  man's  work,  of  something 
wholly  natural,  which  fits  into  the  scene  and  is  part 
and  parcel  with  nature  itself. 

In  buildings  we  get  a  similar  effect  at  the  two 
extremes — in  the  humblest  and  the  highest  work  of 
man's  hands  ;  in  the  small  old  thatched  and  rose-  and 
creeper-covered  cottage  in  perfect  harmony  with  its 
surroundings,  and  in  ancient  majestic  castles  and 
cathedrals,  in  which  the  sharp  lines  and  contours  have 
been  blurred  by  decay  of  the  material  and  the  whole 
surface  weathered  and  stained  with  lichen  and  alga 
and  in  many  cases  partially  draped  with  ivy. 

It  struck  me  before  I  had  been  long  in  St.  Ives  that, 
in  spite  of  the  delightful  mildness  of  the  climate  and 
the  charm  of  the  place,  nobody  but  myself  was  winter- 
ing there.  The  lodging-houses  were  quite  empty  ; 
the  people  were  the  natives  or  else  the  artists,  who 
form  a  pretty  numerous  colony.  The  few  others 
to  be  seen  were  visitors  for  the  day  from  Penzance, 
Falmouth,  or  some  other  spot  in  the  "  Cornish 
Riviera."  This  was  not  a  cause  of  regret,  seeing 
there  were  birds  for  society,  especially  that  old  fav- 
ourite, the  jackdaw.  Doubtless  he  is  to  be  seen  there 


AN    OLD    STREET    IN    ST.    IVES 


14  THE   LAND'S   END 

all  the  year  round  as  he  is  so  common  a  town  bird  all 
over  the  country,  but  at  St.  Ives  many  of  the  cliff- 
breeding  daws  settle  down  regularly  for  the  winter 
and  exist  very  comfortably  on  the  fish  and  other 
refuse  thrown  into  the  streets.  Very  soon  I  estab- 
lished a  sort  of  friendship  with  a  few  of  these  birds  ; 
for  birds  I  must  have,  in  town  or  country — free  birds 
I  mean,  as  the  captive  bird  only  makes  me  melancholy 
—and  in  winter  I  feed  them  whether  they  are  in  want  or 
not.  It  is  an  old  habit  of  mine,  first  practised  in  early 
life  in  June  and  July,  the  cold  winter  months  in  the 
southern  hemisphere,  in  a  land  where  the  English 
sparrow  was  not.  Now,  unhappily,  he  is  there  and  a 
great  deal  too  abundant.  I  fed  a  better  sparrow  in 
those  vanished  days,  smaller  and  more  prettily  shaped 
than  our  bird,  with  a  small  crest  on  his  head  and  a 
sweet  delicate  little  song.  But  in  England  one  really 
gets  far  more  pleasure  from  feeding  the  birds  on 
account  of  the  number  of  different  species  which  are 
willing  to  be  our  pensioners.  At  St.  Ives  I  first 
stayed  at  a  house  in  The  Terrace  facing  the  sea- front, 
and  there  were  no  gardens  there,  so  that  I  had  to  feed 
them  out  in  the  road.  First  there  were  only  sparrows, 
then  a  pair  of  jackdaws  turned  up,  and  soon  others 
joined  them  until  I  had  about  a  score  of  them.  By 
and  by  a  very  big  shaggy  sheep-dog,  belonging  to  a 
carter,  discovered  that  there  was  food  to  be  got  at 
eight  o'clock  at  that  spot  in  the  road,  and  he  too 
came  very  punctually  every  day  and  thoughtlessly 
gobbled  it  all  up  himself.  After  two  or  three  days  of 
this  sort  of  thing,  I  felt  that  it  ought  not  to  be  allowed 


WINTERING    IN   WEST   CORNWALL    15 

to  continue,  and  as  the  daws  were  of  the  same  mind  and 
loyally  seconded  my  efforts  to  stop  it  we  were  soon 
successful.  My  plan  was  to  go  out  and  scatter  the 
scraps  and  crusts  far  and  wide  over  the  road,  and 
while  the  greedy  dog  galloped  about  from  crust  to 
crust  the  daws,  hovering  overhead,  dropped  down 
and  snatched  them  one  by  one  away  before  he  could 
reach  them. 

Later,  when  leaving  St.  Ives,  I  asked  the  landlady 
to  explain  to  the  birds  on  the  following  morning  the 
reason  of  there  being  nothing  for  them,  and  to  request 
them  to  go  quietly  away.  They  were  very  intelligent, 
I  said,  and  would  understand  ;  but  on  my  return,  a 
month  later,  she  said  they  had  not  understood  the 
message,  or  had  not  believed  her,  as  they  had  con- 
tinued to  come  for  several  mornings,  and  had  seemed 
very  much  put  out.  It  was  plain  they  had  kept  an 
eye  on  that  house  during  my  absence,  for  on  going 
out  with  scraps  on  the  morning  after  my  return  they 
promptly  reappeared  in  full  force  on  the  scene. 

There  are  few  persons  to  feed  the  birds  in  those 
parts,  and  those  few,  I  fancy,  are  mostly  visitors  from 
other  counties.  It  amused  me  to  see  how  the  natives 
regarded  my  action  ;  the  passer-by  would  stop  and 
examine  the  scraps  or  crusts,  then  stare  at  me,  and 
finally  depart  with  a  puzzled  expression  on  his  coun- 
tenance, or  perhaps  smiling  at  the  ridiculous  thing  he 
had  witnessed. 

The  following  winter  (1906-7)  1  found  a  lodging 
in  another  part  of  the  town,  in  a  terrace  rather  high 
up,  where  I  could  look  from  my  window  at  the  Bay 


1 6  THE   LAND'S   END 

over  the  tiled  roofs  of  the  old  town.  Here  I  had  a 
front  garden  to  feed  the  birds  in,  and,  better  still,  the 
entire  jackdaw  population  of  St.  Ives,  living  on  the 
roofs  as  is  their  custom,  were  under  my  eyes  and  could 
be  observed  very  comfortably.  I  discovered  that 
they  filled  up  a  good  deal  of  their  vacant  time  each 
morning  in  visiting  the  chimneys  from  which  smoke 
issued,  just  to  inform  themselves,  as  it  seemed,  what 
was  being  cooked  for  breakfast.  This  was  their  pas- 
time and  watching  them  was  mine.  Numbers  of  daws 
would  be  seen,  singly,  in  pairs,  and  in  groups  of  three 
or  four  to  half  a  dozen,  sitting  on  the  roofs  all  over 
the  place.  As  the  morning  progressed  and  more  and 
more  chimneys  sent  out  smoke,  they  would  become 
active  visiting  the  chimneys,  where,  perching  on  the 
rims,  they  would  put  their  heads  down  to  get  the 
smell  rising  from  the  pot  or  frying-pan  on  the  fire 
below.  If  a  bird  remained  long  perched  on  a  chim- 
ney-pot, his  neighbours  would  quickly  conclude  that 
he  had  come  upon  a  particularly  interesting  smell  and 
rush  off  to  share  it  with  him.  When  the  birds  were 
too  many  there  would  be  a  struggle  for  places,  and 
occasionally  it  happened  that  a  puff  of  dense  black 
smoke  would  drive  them  all  off  together. 

A  dozen  incidents  of  this  kind  could  be  witnessed 
any  morning,  and  I  was  as  much  entertained  as  if  I 
had  been  observing  not  birds  but  a  lot  of  lively, 
tricky  little  black  men  with  grey  pates  inhabiting  the 
roofs.  One  morning  when  watching  a  pair  perched 
facing  each  other  on  a  chimney-top  their  movements 
and  gestures  made  me  imagine  that  I  knew  just  what 


WINTERING    IN   WEST   CORNWALL    17 

they  were  saying.  First  one  leaning  over  the  rim 
would  thrust  his  head  down  into  the  smoke  and  keep 
it  there  some  time,  the  other  would  follow  suit,  then 


JACKDAWS 


pulling  themselves  up  they  would  stare  at  each  other 
for  half  a  minute,  then  poke  their  heads  down  again. 
"  A  funny  smell  that !  "  one  says.  "  I  can't  quite 
make  it  out,  and  yet  I  seem  to  know  what  it  is." 


1 8  THE   LAND'S   END 

"  Red  herring,"  suggests  the  other. 

"  Nonsense  !  I  know  that  smell  well  enough.  But 
I  grant  you  it's  just  a  little  like  it,  only — what  shall  I 
say  ? — this  is  a  thicker  sort  of  smell." 

"  I'll  just  have  another  good  sniff,"  says  the  second 
bird.  "  H'm  !  I  wonder  if  it's  some  very  old  pil- 
chards they've  found  stowed  away  in  some  corner  ?  " 

"  No,"  says  the  first  bird,  pulling  his  head  out  of 
the  smoke  and  blinking  his  wicked  little  grey  eyes. 
"  It  isn't  pilchards.  Just  one  more  sniff.  I've  got  it  ! 
A  very  old  piece  of  dry  salted  conger  they're  broiling 
on  the  coals." 

"  By  Jove,  you're  right  this  time  !  It  is  a  good 
thick  smell !  I  only  wish  I  could  drop  down  the  flue, 
snatch  up  that  bit  of  conger,  and  get  clear  away 
with  it." 

"  You'd  soon  have  a  jolly  lot  of  jacks  after  you,  I 
fancy.  Hullo  !  what  are  those  fellows  making  such 
a  to-do  about — down  there  on  that  chimney-pot  ? 
Let's  go  and  find  out." 

And  away  they  fly,  to  drop  down  and  fight  for 
places  among  the  others. 


CHAPTER  II 
GULLS    AT    ST.    IVES 

Gulls  in  fishing  harbours — Their  numbers  and  beautiful  appearance  at 
St.  Ives — Different  species — Robbing  the  fishermen — Ho\v  they  are 
regarded — The  Glaucous  gull  or  Burgomaster — Cause  of  the 
fishermen's  feeling — A  demonstration  of  hungry  gulls — A  gull 
tragedy. 

TO  a  bird  lover  the  principal  charm  of  St.  Ives 
is  in  its  gull  population.     Gulls  greatly  out- 
number all  the  other  wild  birds  of  the  town 
and  harbour  put  together,  and  though  they  have  not 
the  peculiar  fascination  of  the  jackdaw,  which  is  due 
to   that    bird's    intelligence  and    amusing   rascalities, 
they  are  very  much  more  beautiful. 

Of  all  feathered  creatures  gulls  are  ever  the  quickest 
to  discover  food  thrown  accidentally  in  their  way  by 
man.  In  many  lands,  crows,  vultures,  carrion  hawks, 
and  omnivorous  feeders  generally  acquire  the  habit  of 
watching  the  movements  of  the  human  hunter  and  of 
travellers  in  desert  places  for  the  sake  of  his  leavings. 

'9 


20  THE   LAND'S   END 

In  the  gulls  this  habit  is  universal  ;  their  "  wide  eyes 
that  search  the  sea  "  have  discovered  that  where  there 
is  a  ship  or  boat  something  may  be  picked  up  by 
following  it,  and  in  all  lands  where  there  is  a  plough 
to  share  the  soil  the  plougher  is  pretty  sure  to  have 
a  following  of  gulls  at  his  heels.  In  harbours  they 
are  much  at  home,  but  are  especially  attracted  to  a 
fishing  town,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  find  one  where 
they  make  a  better  appearance  than  at  St.  Ives.  But 
not  solely  on  account  of  their  numbers  and  tameness, 
since  they  congregate  at  all  fishing  stations  and  are 
just  as  tame  and  abundant  elsewhere.  At  St.  Ives 
they  make  a  better  show  because  of  the  picturesque 
character  of  the  place  itself — the  small  harbour,  open 
to  the  wide  blue  bay  and  the  Atlantic,  crowded 
with  its  forest  of  tall  slim  masts  resembling  a 
thick  grove  of  larches  in  winter,  while  for  back- 
ground there  is  the  little  old  town,  its  semicircle  of 
irregular  quaint  and  curious  stone-grey  and  tile-red 
buildings. 

The  gulls  that  congregate  here  are  of  several  kinds: 
on  most  days  one  can  easily  count  five  species,  the 
most  abundant  being  the  herring  and  the  lesser  black- 
backed  gulls,  and  with  them  you  generally  see  one  or 
two  great  black-backs.  Then  there  are  the  two 
small  species,  the  common  and  the  black-headed  gull. 
These,  when  it  comes  to  a  general  scramble  for  the 
small  fishes  and  other  waste,  are  mere  pickers-up  of 
unconsidered  trifles  on  the  outskirts  of  the  whirlwind 
of  wings,  the  real  fighting  area,  and  their  guttural 
cries — a  familiar  sound  to  Londoners  in  winter — are 


GULLS   AT   ST.   IVES 


21 


drowned  in  the  tempest  of  hard,  piercing,  and  grinding 
metallic  noises  emitted  by  the  bigger  birds. 

All  this  noise  and  fury  and  scurry  of  wings  of 
innumerable  white  forms,  mixed  up  with  boats  and 
busy  shouting  men,  comes  to  be  regarded  by  the 
people  concerned  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  whole 
business,  and  the  bigger  the  bird  crowd  and  the  louder 
the  uproar  the  better  they  appear  to  like  it.  For  their 
gulls  are  very  dear  to  them. 

One  morning  when  looking  on  and  enjoying  the 
noisy  scene,  I  saw 
one  of  the  smaller 
boats  left  unatten- 
ded by  the  men. 
They  had  thrown 
a  canvas  over  the 
fish,  but  this  the 
gulls  soon  succeeded 


ftLC 


in  pulling  aside  ; 
then  those  overhead 
converging  poured 
down  in  the  form  of 
a  white  column,  and 
the  boat  was  covered 
from  stem  to  stern 
with  a  mass  of  birds 
madly  fighting  for 

the  herrings.  The  men  in  other  boats  close  by 
looked  on  and  laughed  ;  by  and  by  they  began  shout- 
ing, but  this  had  no  effect,  and  the  struggling  and 
feasting  went  on  until  the  master  of  the  boat  returned 


A    CORNISH    FISHERMAN 


22  THE   LAND'S   END 

and  scared  them  off.  He  said  afterwards  that  they 
had  devoured  half  his  catch,  yet  the  men  who  had 
been  standing  by  looking  on  had  made  no  real  attempt 
to  save  the  fish. 

The  gulls  know  their  fiends  very  well  ;  with  the 
man  in  sea-boots  and  oilskins  they  are  tamer  than  any 
domestic  bird  ;  they  will  take  food  from  his  hands 
and  love  to  settle  to  rest  on  the  boats  and  to  sit 
perched  like  swallows  on  the  mast  top.  They  have 
not  the  same  confidence  towards  strangers,  and  they 
positively  dislike  small  boys.  When  boys  appear 
they  fly  away  to  a  distance.  One  evening,  the  men 
being  out  of  sight,  I  found  three  urchins  amusing 
themselves  by  throwing  stones  at  a  few  small  gulls 
flying  about  the  sand  in  search  of  scraps.  "  What 
would  you  get,"  I  asked  them,  "if  one  of  the  men 
caught  you  stoning  the  gulls  ? "  "  Oh  !  "  cried  the 
biggest  of  the  three,  drawing  his  head  down  between 
his  shoulders  in  a  most  expressive  way,  "we'd  get  our 
ears  well  cuffed."  "  Very  well,"  I  said,  "  I'm  here  in 
their  place  to-day  to  look  after  the  birds."  In  a 
moment  they  dropped  their  stones  and  taking  to  their 
heels  vanished  in  a  neighbouring  court. 

Yet  these  very  boys  in  a  few  years'  time,  when  they 
will  be  in  the  boats  too,  will  have  the  same  feeling  as 
the  men,  and  be  ready  to  inflict  the  severest  punish- 
ment on  any  youngster  they  may  catch  throwing  a 
pebble  at  one  of  their  sacred  birds  ! 

One  day  I  caught  sight  of  a  large  ivory-white  gull 
of  an  unknown  species  sitting  on  the  water  some 
distance  from  the  shore,  and  was  very  anxious  to  see 


GULLS  AT  ST.    IVES 


To  face  page  22 


GULLS   AT   ST.   IVES  23 

more  of  this  bird.  Two  or  three  days  later  I  was 
with  an  artist  friend  in  his  studio,  and  was  standing  at 
the  window  which  looks  upon  a  sandy  cove  at  the 
back  of  the  town.  By  and  by  a  wave  of  the  incom- 
ing tide  threw  up  a  dead  dogfish  about  three  feet 
long  on  the  white  sand  within  fifty  yards  of  the 
window.  Scarcely  was  the  fish  left  by  the  retiring 
water  before  a  big  white-winged  gull  dropped  down 
upon  it — the  very  bird  I  had  been  hoping  to  encoun- 
ter again  !  There  it  remained,  trying  to  tear  a  hole 
in  the  tough  skin,  fully  five  minutes  before  the  re- 
turning water  took  the  fish  away,  so  that  I  had  a 
good  chance  of  examining  it  through  a  binocular.  It 
was  considerably  bigger  than  the  herring  gull,  with  a 
much  more  formidable  beak  and  altogether  a  bolder 
appearance,  and  the  entire  plumage  was  of  a  chalky 
white.  It  was  a  Glaucous  gull — the  famous  Burgo- 
master of  the  Arctic  Sea,  probably  a  female  in  im- 
mature plumage.  In  a  few  moments  other  gulls 
dropped  down  to  get  a  bite — three  herring  and  one 
black-backed  gull  with  some  smaller  gulls — but  they 
were  not  allowed  to  taste  the  fish.  When  one 
attempted  to  come  near  it  the  white  gull  looked 
fixedly  at  him  a  couple  of  moments,  then  drawing  in 
its  head  suddenly  tipped  its  beak  upwards  —  an 
expressive  gull  gesture  corresponding  to  the  snarl 
of  a  dog  when  he  is  feeding  and  other  dogs  approach 
him.  It  produced  a  marked  effect  on  the  other  gulls; 
perhaps  the  Burgomaster,  a  rare  visitor  to  our  seas, 
was  known,  from  hearsay,  to  them  as  a  great  tyrant. 
Talking  of  this  noble  stranger  to  one  of  the  fisher- 


24  THE   LAND'S   END 

men,  I  remarked  that  if  a  bird  collector  happened  to 
be  about  he  would  certainly  have  that  bird  even  if 
compelled  to  fire  into  the  whole  crowd  of  gulls  to 
kill  it.  "Then,"  he  returned,  "perhaps  our  men 
would  kill  him  !  " 

The  curious  point  is  that  this  feeling  should  exist 
and  be  so  strong  in  a  people  who  have  little  or  no 
regard  for  birds  generally.  The  most  religious  of 
men,  they  are  at  the  same  time  the  least  humane. 
The  gull  they  tell  you  is  the  fisherman's  friend  ;  but 
other  sea-birds,  which  he  kills  without  compunction — 
the  gannet,  for  instance — are  useful  to  him  in  the 
same  way  as  the  gull.  They  also  say  that  the  gulls 
keep  the  harbour  sweet  and  clean  ;  an  explanation 
probably  invented  for  them  by  some  stranger  within 
their  gates.  The  fact  is,  they  cherish  an  affection 
for  the  gulls,  though  they  refuse  to  confess  it,  and, 
being  what  they  are  by  race,  this  feeling  has  ac- 
quired the  character  of  a  superstition.  To  injure 
a  gull  wilfully  is  to  invite  disaster.  It  may  be 
that  the  origin  of  the  feeling  is  simply  the  fact  that 
gulls  gather  in  vociferous  crowds  round  the  boats  and 
in  the  harbour  when  the  fishing  has  prospered,  and  in 
this  way  become  associated  in  the  fisherman's  mind 
with  all  those  agreeable  ideas  or  images  and  emotions 
connected  with  a  good  catch — smiles  and  cheerful 
words  of  greeting  in  the  home,  with  food  in  abun- 
dance, money  for  the  rent  and  for  needed  clothes  and 
other  good  things  for  the  little  ones. 

On  the  other  hand  we  may  have  here  a  survival  of 
an  older  superstition,  a  notion  that  gulls  are  in  some 


GULLS   AT   ST.   IVES  25 

degree  supernatural  beings,  perhaps  drowned  manners 
and  fishermen  returned  in  bird  forms  to  haunt  their 
ancient  homes  and  associate  with  their  human  fellow- 
creatures.  The  feeling  is  certainly  very  strong  :  I 
was  told  that  some  of  the  fishermen  even  in  their 
times  of  greatest  scarcity  will  always  manage  at  meal- 
time to  put  a  few  crusts  and  scraps  of  food  into  their 
pockets  to  throw  to  the  gulls  in  the  harbour. 


FISHERMEN 


From  all  this  it  might  appear  that  the  gulls  at 
St.  Ives  are  having  an  exceedingly  good  time,  but 
they  are  not  wholly  happy — not  happy  every  day,  as 
they  very  soon  let  me  know.  The  fishermen,  like 
the  Cornish  people  generally,  are  strict  Sabbatarians, 
and  from  Friday  night  or  Saturday  morning,  when 
the  boats  come  in,  they  do  not  go  out  again  until  the 
following  Monday  evening.  In  a  neighbouring  fish- 


26  THE   LAND'S   END 

ing  village  the  boats  are  taken  out  at  the  stroke  of 
twelve  on  Sunday  night.  The  St.  Ives  men  do  not 
like  to  run  it  so  fine,  and  the  gulls  are  never  able  to 
understand  this  long  break  in  the  fishing.  On  the 
Saturday,  after  feeding,  they  retire  to  the  sea  and  the 
rocks,  where  they  pass  the  day  comfortably  enough, 
sitting  with  beaks  to  the  wind  and  digesting  a  plenti- 
ful meal.  On  Sunday  morning  they  congregate  in 
the  harbour  with  empty  stomachs  only  to  find  the 
boats  lying  empty  and  idle  and  all  the  men 
away;  they  do  not  like  it,  but  they  put  up  with  it, 
and  by  and  by  loiter  off  to  pick  up  what  they  can  for 
themselves,  or  to  wait  patiently  on  the  sea  and  the 
rocks,  through  another  long  twenty-four  hours.  On 
Monday  morning  they  are  very  hungry  indeed,  and 
come  in  with  stomachs  that  scream  for  food. 
They  come  in  their  thousands,  and  still  nothing  for 
them — the  boats  lying  empty  and  idle,  the  men  still 
at  home  in  bed  and  no  movement  in  the  harbour  ! 
They  cannot  and  they  will  not  endure  it.  Then 
begins  a  tremendous  demonstration  of  the  unem- 
ployed. On  my  first  Monday  I  was  roused  from 
slumber  before  daylight  by  the  uproar.  It  was  not 
now  that  tempest  and  tangle  of  broken,  squealing  and 
grinding  metallic  noises  emitted  by  the  big  gulls  when 
they  are  in  numbers  fighting  over  their  food,  it  was 
the  loud  long  wailing  call  of  the  bird,  incessantly 
repeated,  a  thousand  wailing  like  one,  and  at  intervals 
the  dreary  laughter-like  chorus  of  short  reiterated 
cries  ;  then  again  the  insistent  wailing  calls.  When 
it  became  light  they  could  be  seen  as  a  white  cloud 


GULLS   AT    ST.   IVES  27 

hanging  over  the  harbour,  the  birds  moving  round 
and  round  over  the  idle  boats  in  endless  procession, 
and  this  went  on  for  about  an  hour,  when,  finding 
that  nothing  came  of  it  all,  they  went  sadly  away. 

On  yet  another  morning  I  was  awakened  before 
daylight,  but  this  was  a  happy  occasion,  the  boats 
having  come  in  during  the  small  hours  laden  with 
the  biggest  catch  of  the  season.  The  noise  of  the 
birds  made  me  get  up  and  dress  in  a  hurry  to  go  and 
find  out  what  it  was  all  about.  For  an  hour  and  a 
half  I  stood  at  the  end  of  the  little  stone  pier  watch- 
ing the  cloud  and  whirlwind  of  vociferous  birds,  and 
should  have  remained  longer  but  for  a  singular  acci- 
dent— a  little  gull  tragedy — which  brought  a  sudden 
end  to  the  feast.  The  men  in  fifty  boats  while  occu- 
pied in  disengaging  the  fish  from  the  nets  were  con- 
tinually throwing  the  small  useless  fishes  away,  and 
these,  falling  all  round  in  the  water,  brought  down  a 
perpetual  rush  and  rain  of  gulls  from  overhead  ; 
everywhere  they  were  frantically  struggling  on  the 
water,  while  every  bird  rising  with  a  fish  in  his  beak 
was  instantly  swooped  down  upon  and  chased  by  the 
others.  Now  one  of  the  excited  birds  while  rushing 
down  by  chance  struck  a  rope  or  spar  and  fell  into 
the  water  at  the  side  of  a  boat,  about  forty  yards 
from  where  I  was  standing.  It  was  a  herring  gull  in 
mature  plumage,  and  its  wing  was  broken.  The 
bird  could  not  understand  this ;  it  made  frantic 
efforts  to  rise,  but  the  whole  force  exerted  being  in 
one  wing  merely  caused  it  to  spin  rapidly  round  and 
round.  These  struggles  eventually  caused  the  shat- 


28  THE   LAND'S   END 

tered  bone  to  break  through  the  skin  ;  the  blood 
began  to  flow  and  redden  the  plumage  on  one  side. 
This  was  again  and  again  washed  off  in  the  succeed- 
ing struggles  to  rise,  but  every  time  a  pause  came 
the  feathers  were  reddened  afresh.  At  length  the 
poor  thing  became  convinced  that  it  could  no  longer 
fly,  that  it  could  only  swim,  and  at  once  ceasing  to 
struggle  it  swam  away  from  the  boats  and  out  to- 
wards the  open  bay.  Hardly  had  it  gone  a  dozen 
yards  from  the  boat-side  where  it  had  fallen  before 
some  of  the  gulls  flying  near  observed  it  for  the  first 
time,  and  dropping  to  within  three  or  four  yards  of 
the  surface  hovered  over  it.  Then  a  strange  thing 
happened.  Instantly,  as  if  a  shot  had  been  fired  to 
silence  them,  the  uproar  in  the  harbour  ceased  ;  the 
hundreds  of  gulls  fighting  on  the  water  rose  up 
simultaneously  to  join  the  cloud  of  birds  above,  and 
the  whole  concourse  moved  silently  away  in  one 
direction,  forming  a  dense  crowd  above  the  wounded 
bird.  In  this  formation,  suspended  at  a  height  of 
about  thirty  yards  over  and  moving  with  him,  they 
travelled  slowly  out  into  the  middle  of  the  bay. 

The  silence  and  stillness  in  the  harbour  seemed 
strange  after  that  tempest  of  noise  and  motion,  for 
not  a  bird  had  remained  behind,  nor  did  one  return 
for  at  least  half  an  hour  ;  then  in  small  companies 
they  began  to  straggle  back  to  resume  the  interrupted 
feast. 


CHAPTER   III 
CORNWALL'S    CONNEMARA 

Aspect  of  the  country — Gilpin  on  Cornish  scenery — The  farm-houses 
— Footpaths  and  stiles — Cattle  and  pigs — A  friendly  so\\ — Dogs 
and  foxes — Stony  fields — Farmers'  love  of  their  holdings — An 
old  farmer. 

THE  coast  country  at  the  end  or  the  western 
extremity  of  Cornwall  presents  an  aspect  wild 
and  rough  as  any  spot  in  England.  The 
eighty-miles-long  county,  which  some  one  compares 
to  a  malformed  knobbly  human  leg  in  shape,  narrows 
down  near  its  termination  to  a  neck  or  ankle  of  land 
no  more  than  six  or  seven  miles  wide,  with  St.  Ives 
Bay  on  one  (the  north)  side,  and  Mount's  Bay  on  the 
other,  with  its  group  of  places  of  famous  or  familiar 
names — Mousehole,  Newlyn,  Penzance,  Marazion 
and  St.  Michael's  Mount.  Then  the  land  broadens 
again,  forming  that  rounded  bit  of  country,  the 


30  THE   LAND'S    END 

westernmost  part  of  England,  containing  seventy-five 
or  eighty  square  miles  of  hilly  and  moorland  country, 
in  great  part  treeless,  with  a  coastline,  from  bay  to 
bay,  of  about  thirty  miles.  Following  the  coast,  one 
does  not  wish  them  more  :  the  most  enthusiastic 
lover  of  an  incult  nature,  who  delights  in  forcing  his 
way  over  rocky  barriers  and  through  thickets  of 
furze,  bogs  and  rills  innumerable,  will  find  these  thirty 
miles  as  satisfying  as  any  sixty  elsewhere.  And  the 
roughest,  therefore  most  exhilarating,  portion  of  the 
coast  is  that  between  St.  Ives  and  Land's  End,  a  dis- 
tance of  about  twenty  miles.  This  strip  of  country 
has  been  called  the  Connemara  of  Cornwall.  William 
Gilpin,  that  grand  old  seeker  after  the  picturesque  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  once  journeyed 
into  Cornwall,  but  got  no  further  than  Bodmin,  as  he 
saw  nothing  but  "  a  barren  and  naked  country,  in  all 
respects  as  uninteresting  as  can  well  be  conceived," 
and  he  was  informed  that  west  of  Bodmin  it  was  no 
better.  It  is,  indeed,  worse,  and  one  wonders  what 
his  feelings  would  have  been  had  he  persevered  to 
the  very  end — to  rough  "Connemara"  and  flat,  naked 
Bolerium  !  His  strictures  on  the  scenery  would  have 
amused  the  present  generation.  For  all  that  repelled 
Gilpin  and  those  of  his  time  in  nature,  the  barren  or 
"  undecorated,"  as  he  would  say,  the  harsh  and  savage 
and  unsuited  to  human  beings,  now  most  attracts  us. 
And  of  all  places  inhabited  by  man  this  coast  country 
is  the  most  desert-like  and  desolate  in  appearance. 
The  black,  frowning,  wave-beaten  cliffs  on  the  one 
hand,  the  hills  and  moors  on  the  other,  treeless, 


CORNWALL'S   CONNEMARA  31 

strewn  abundantly  with  granite  boulders,  rough  with 
heath  and  furze  and  bracken,  the  summits  crowned 
with  great  masses  of  rock  resembling  ancient  ruined 
castles.  Midway  between  the  hills  and  the  sea,  half 
a  mile  or  so  from  the  cliffs,  are  the  farms,  but  the 
small  houses  and  walled  fields  on  the  inhabited  strip 
hardly  detract  from  the  rude  and  savage  aspect  of  the 
country.  Nature  will  be  Nature  here,  and  man,  like 
the  other  inhabitants  of  the  wilderness,  has  adapted 
himself  to  the  conditions.  The  badgers  have  their 
earths,  the  foxes  their  caverns  in  the  rocks,  and  the 
linnet,  yellow-hammer,  and  magpie  hide  their  nests, 
big  and  little,  in  the  dense  furze  bushes  :  he  in  like 
manner  builds  his  dwelling  small  and  low,  shelter- 
ing as  best  he  can  in  any  slight  depression  in  the 
ground,  or  behind  thickets  of  furze  and  the  rocks  he 
piles  up.  The  small  naked  stone  farm-house,  with  its 
little  outbuildings,  corn  -  stacks,  and  wood  piles 
huddling  round  it,  seem  like  a  little  flock  of  goats 
drawn  together  for  company  and  shelter  in  some  rough 
desert  place  on  a  cold  windy  day.  Looking  from  a 
hill-top  on  one  of  the  small  groups  of  buildings — and 
in  some  instances  two  or  three  farms  have  clubbed 
their  houses  together  for  better  protection  from  the 
blast — they  resemble  toy  houses,  and  you  have  the 
fancy  that  you  could  go  down  and  pick  them  up  and 
put  them  in  your  pocket. 

The  coast  road,  running  from  village  to  village, 
winding  much,  now  under  now  over  the  hills,  comes 
close  to  some  of  the  farms  and  leaves  others  at  a 
distance  ;  but  all  these  little  human  centres  are  united 


32  THE   LAND'S   END 

by  a  footpath  across  the  fields.  It  is  very  pleasant  to 
follow  this  slight  track,  this  connecting  thread,  which 
brings  to  mind  Richard  Carew's  account  of  the  poor 
Cornish  farmers  of  his  time,  three  centuries  ago,  when 
he  says  that  "amongst  themselves  they  agree  well  and 


A    CORNISH    STILE 


company  lovingly  together."  I  recall,  too,  that  some 
social  rodents,  that  live  in  communities,  in  collections 
of  burrows  or  villages,  have  a  track  of  that  kind  lead- 
ing from  village  to  village,  worn  by  the  feet  of  the 
little  animals  in  visiting  their  neighbours.  The  fields 
being  small  you  have  innumerable  stiles  to  cross  in  a 
five  or  a  ten  miles  walk  ;  but  they  do  not  want  climb- 


CORNWALL'S   CONNEMARA  33 

ing,  as  they  are  very  nearly  all  of  that  Cornish  type 
made  with  half  a  dozen  or  more  large  slabs  of  granite 
placed  gridiron-wise  almost  flush  with  the  ground. 
You  step  easily  over  the  stones  :  but  the  cattle  do  not 
follow,  since,  owing  to  their  inability  to  see  just  where 
their  feet  will  be  set,  their  legs  would  come  down 
between  the  slabs. 

Cows  are  in  most  of  the  fields,  the  dairy  being  the 
main  thing  in  these  farms  ;  and  next  to  the  small 
Jersey-like  cow,  the  native  breed,  the  pig  ranks  in  im- 
portance. It  is  pleasant  to  see  the  pigs  in  these  parts, 
as  they  are  allowed  more  liberty  in  the  fields  and  about 
the  house  than  they  usually  get  in  other  places  ;  or, 
indeed,  anywhere  on  this  side  of  St.  George's  Channel. 
If  not  "  the  gintleman  that  pays  the  rint,"  the  pig  con- 
tributes a  good  deal  towards  it,  and  short  of  liberty  to 
walk  in  at  the  front  door  and  take  his  place  in  the 
family  circle  he  has  every  consideration  paid  him.  On 
going  up  to  a  farm-house  one  is  sometimes  obliged  to 
get  round  or  step  over  a  pig  lying  comfortably  in  the 
path.  One  day,  going  to  call  on  some  friends  who 
had  taken  lodgings  at  a  small  farm,  I  found  a  portly 
sow  lying  in  the  way  a  dozen  yards  or  so  from  the 
front  door.  My  friends  were  getting  ready  for  a 
walk,  and  when  we  came  out  the  sow  got  up  and, 
placing  herself  at  the  side  of  the  lady,  set  out  with 
us.  We  all  tried  our  best  to  turn  her  back,  shouting 
indignantly  at  her  and  pushing  her  away  with  our 
sticks  and  boots,  but  all  in  vain — she  would  come. 
"  I'm  to  blame,"  said  the  lady.  "  When  we  first  came 
we  had  tea  out  of  doors,  and  when  this  pig  came  up 


34  THE   LAND'S   END 

to  look  at  us  I  foolishly  gave  her  a  slice  of  bread  and 
butter  and  spoke  kindly  to  her,  and  now  I  can't  get 
away  from  her.  I  give  her  nothing,  and  1  try  to 
escape  her  attention,  but  she  watches  the  door,  and 
when  she  sees  me  with  my  things  on  she  insists  on 
keeping  with  me  even  if  I  walk  miles.  It  is  most 
inconvenient."  It  certainly  was,  and  we  carefully 
avoided  the  village  for  fear  of  remarks.  Fowls,  too, 
are  reared  in  numbers,  and  it  is  a  great  grievance  of 
the  farmers  that  foxes  must  be  religiously  preserved 
along  this  coast  where  they  cannot  be  hunted.  Here, 
again,  I  am  reminded  of  Carew's  Survey  of  Cornwall, 
in  which  he  writes  :  "  The  fox  planteth  his  dwelling 
in  the  steep  cliffs  of  the  seaside,  where  he  possesseth 
holds,  so  many  in  number,  so  dangerous  of  access, 
and  so  full  of  windings,  as  in  a  manner  it  falleth  out 
a  matter  impossible  to  disseize  him  of  his  ancient 
inheritance."  He  still  keeps  it,  and  after  three  cen- 
turies is  more  secure  in  it  than  ever,  since  there  is 
now  no  stronger  law  than  this  unwritten  one  which 
gives  immunity  to  the  fox. 

As  a  rule,  several  dogs  are  kept  on  the  farm  ;  but 
he  cares  little  for  them.  His  fastness  is  close  by  in 
the  cliffs,  and  between  it  and  the  farm  there  is  a 
wilderness  of  furze  bushes  and  stone  fences,  the  ins 
and  outs  of  which  he  knows  better  than  the  dogs. 
They  cannot  come  near  him.  At  one  place  the 
farmer's  wife  told  me  the  foxes  came  about  the  house 
almost  every  night  and  started  barking,  whereupon 
the  dogs  barked  in  reply,  and  this  would  go  on,  bark 
fox,  bark  dog,  by  the  hour,  keeping  them  awake, 


CORNWALL'S   CONNEMARA  35 

until  at  last  the  dogs,  tired  of  the  useless  contest, 
would  go  to  sleep  ;  then  the  foxes  would  sneak  in  to 
see  what  they  could  pick  up. 

There  is  very  little  cultivation — hardly  more  than 
is  required  for  the  use  of  the  farm,  and  in  many  fields 
even  this  little  is  carried  on  under  difficulties  on 
account  of  the  stones.  The  stones  are  taken  out  and 
piled  on  to  the  walls  or  hedges  at  the  side,  and 
though  this  process  has  been  going  on  for  centuries 
many  boulders  and  huge  blocks  of  granite  still  remain 
in  the  little  fields.  I  was  amused  one  day  at  the  sight 
of  a  field  of  only  about  two  acres  on  which  I  counted 
135  stones  appearing  like  huge  mushrooms  and  toad- 
stools over  the  ground.  Corn  had  been  grown  on  it, 
and  I  asked  the  farmer  how  it  was  managed.  He 
answered  that  he  would  laugh  to  see  a  man  and 
horses  from  any  other  part  of  the  country  try  to 
cultivate  that  field  and  others  like  it.  Here  the 
men  are  used  to  it,  and  horses  know  their  part 
so  well  that  if  the  share  touches  a  stone  they  stop 
instantly  and  wait  for  the  ploughman's  word  to 
move  on. 

This  same  farmer  told  me  that  one  day  last 
summer  a  lady  visitor  staying  in  the  neighbourhood 
came  to  where  he  was  doing  some  work  and  burst  out 
in  praise  of  the  place,  and  told  him  she  envied  him 
his  home  in  the  dearest,  sweetest,  loveliest  spot  on 
earth.  "That's  what  you  think,  ma'am,"  he  returned, 
"  because  you're  here  for  a  week  or  two  in  summer 
when  it's  fine  and  the  heath  in  bloom.  Now  I  think 
it's  the  poorest,  ugliest,  horriblest  place  in  the  whole 


36  THE   LAND'S   END 

world,  because  I've  got  to  live  in  it  and  get  my  living 
out  of  it." 

They  certainly  have  to  work  hard  to  make  the  £2 
per  acre  they  have  to  pay  for  their  stony  fields.  But 
they  are  a  tough,  industrious,  frugal  people,  in  many 
instances  little  removed  from  peasants  in  their  way  of 
living,  and  are  strongly  attached  to  their  rude  homes 
and  rough  country.  If  you  tell  them  that  their  lot  is 
exceedingly  hard,  that  they  pay  too  high  a  rent,  and 
so  on,  enumerating  all  the  drawbacks,  they  assent 
eagerly,  and  will  put  in  many  little  touches  to  make 
the  picture  darker  ;  but  if  you  then  advise  them  to 
throw  up  their  farms  and  migrate  to  some  place  you 
can  name,  in  the  Midlands  say,  where  they  will  pay 
less  for  better  land,  and  be  out  of  the  everlasting 
wind  which  tears  every  green  leaf  to  shreds  and 
makes  their  lives  a  perpetual  discomfort,  they  shake 
their  heads.  They  cannot  endure  the  thought  of 
leaving  their  homes.  It  is  only  the  all  but  complete 
ruin  of  the  tin-mining  industry  that  has  sent  so  many 
Cornishmen  into  exile  in  distant  lands.  But  these 
wanderers  are  always  thinking  of  home  and  come 
back  when  they  can.  One  meets  them  every  day, 
young  and  middle-aged  men,  back  from  Africa, 
Australia,  America  ;  not  to  settle  down,  since  there  is 
nothing  for  them  to  do — not  just  yet  at  all  events  ; 
but  because  they  have  saved  a  little  and  can  afford  to 
take  that  long  journey  for  the  joy  of  seeing  the  dear 
old  faces  again,  and  the  dear  familiar  land  which 
proved  so  uninteresting  to  the  reverend  author  of 
Forest  Scenery. 


CORNWALL'S   CONNEMARA  37 

But  farming,  unlike  the  mining  and  fishing  indus- 
tries, cannot  fail  utterly,  and  so  long  as  a  living  can 
be  made  out  of  it  these  men  will  stick  to  their 
farms. 

One  brilliant  spring-like  day  in  midwinter  I  came 
upon  an  old  man  on  the  footpath  at  some  distance 
from  the  nearest  house,  painfully  walking  to  and 
fro  on  a  clean  piece  of  ground  with  the  aid  of 
two  sticks.  An  old  farmer,  past  work,  I  thought. 
His  appearance  greatly  attracted  me,  for  though  his 
bent  shrunken  legs  could  hardly  support  him,  he  had 
a  fine  head  and  a  broad,  deep,  powerful-looking 
chest.  His  face  was  of  that  intensely  Irish  type  so 
common  in  West  Cornwall,  but  more  shapely,  more 
noble,  with  a  look  of  strength  and  resolution  not  at 
all  common. 

Seeing  that  he  was  old  I  supposed  he  was  deaf, 
and  shouted  my  "  Good  day,"  and  the  remark  that  it 
was  a  very  fine  day.  But  there  was  no  need  to  shout, 
his  senses  were  very  good.  "Good  day  to  you,"  he 
returned,  his  stone-grey  stern  eyes  fixed  on  my  face. 
"  Yes,  it  is  a  fine  day  indeed — very,  very  fine.  And 
no  frost,  no  cold  at  all,  and  the  winter  going  on,  going 
on.  We  are  getting  on  very  well  indeed."  And  to 
this  subject  he  kept  in  spite  of  my  attempts  to  lead 
the  talk  to  something  else.  The  lovely  weather,  the 
extraordinary  mildness  of  the  season,  the  comfort  of 
a  winter  with  no  frost  or  cold  at  all — to  that  he  would 
come  back.  And  at  length,  when  I  said  good-bye 
and  left  him,  the  last  words  I  heard  him  say  were, 
"  Yes,  the  winter  is  going — very  freely,  very  freely." 


38  THE   LAND'S   END 

For  he  was  old — his  age  was  eighty-seven  ;  he  had 
come  to  that  time  of  life  when  the  weather  becomes 
strangely  important  to  a  man,  when  winter  is  a  season 
of  apprehension  ;  when  he  remembers  that  the  days 
of  our  age  are  three-score  years  and  ten,  and  though 
men  be  so  strong  that  they  come  to  four-score  years, 
yet  is  their  strength  then  but  labour  and  sorrow,  so 
soon  passeth  it  away.  I  was  told  that  he  had  farmed 
the  land  where  I  found  him  taking  his  constitutional 
since  he  was  a  young  man  ;  that  some  months  ago, 
on  account  of  his  infirmities,  he  had  handed  the  farm 
over  to  one  of  his  sons,  and  that  he  was  still  able  to 
help  a  little  in  the  work.  His  arms  were  strong  still, 
and  once  up  on  the  seat  he  could  drive  a  cart  or  trap 
or  reaping  machine  as  well  as  any  one. 

He  was  but  one  of  several  grey  old  men  I  met  with 
on  the  farms,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  they  were  some- 
thing like  their  neighbour  the  badger,  that  they  are  as 
tenacious  of  their  dreary-looking  little  homesteads 
and  stony  fields  as  that  tough  beast  is  of  his  earth 
among  the  rocks. 


CHAPTER   IV 
OLD    CORNISH    HEDGES 

Hedges  in  England — Plant  and  animal  life — Stone  hedges  in  Corn- 
wall— Effect  of  wind  on  trees — How  hedges  are  made — Appear- 
ance of  stone  hedges — An  ancient  hedge — Woody  ivy — Signs  of 
antiquity — An  old  man's  testimony. 

EVERY  one  in  England  knows  what  a  hedge 
is — a  row  of  thorn  or  other  hardy  bushes 
originally  planted  to  protect  a  field,  which, 
when  old  and  unkept,  has  the  appearance  and 
character  of  a  brake  or  thicket.  It  consequently 
comes  as  a  surprise  when  we  first  visit  the  remote  and 
most  un-English  county  of  Cornwall  to  discover  that 
a  hedge  there  may  mean  something  quite  different  It 
puzzled  me  to  read  in  a  book  on  Cornwall  that  in 
some  exceedingly  rough  places  near  the  coast  one 
found  it  easier  to  make  one's  way  over  the  ground  by 
climbing  on  to  a  hedge  and  walking  along  its  top. 

39 


40  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  oldest,  toughest,  closest  and  most  evenly-cut 
hedge  one  knows  would  hardly  afford  a  safe  footing 
for  a  man  ;  and  as  to  attempting  to  get  upon  or  walk 
on  a  big  unkept  hedge,  such  as  are  common  in  the 
south  and  west  counties  on  this  side  the  Tamar,  the 
very  thought  of  it  is  painful.  In  imagination  one 
sees,  and  seeing  feels,  oneself  stuck  fast  in  a  big 
bramble  bush.  In  Cornwall  I  discovered  that  a  stone 
wall  was  called  a  hedge — the  sort  of  wall  which  in 
Scotland  I  had  been  taught  to  call  a  dyke.  I  did  not 
like  it  so  well  as  the  English  hedge,  that  wild  dis- 
ordered tangle  of  all  the  most  beautiful  plants  in 
these  islands — black  and  white  thorn  ;  privet  with  its 
small  grape-like  clusters  ;  yew  and  holly  and  ivy  with 
late,  honeyed  blossoms  for  bees  and  wasps  and  hor- 
nets ;  and  briar  and  sweet-briar,  bramble  and  briony  ; 
also  poisonous  black  briony  and  traveller's-joy,  a 
green  and  silver  tapestry  ;  and  wayfaring  tree,  spindle- 
wood  and  cornel,  with  scarlet,  purple  and  orange- 
coloured  berries  ;  and  dark  deadly-nightshade,  push- 
ing its  slender  stems  up  through  the  interlaced 
branches — all  massed  together  for  common  protection 
like  a  packed  herd  of  wild  swine  on  their  defence  in 
some  savage  solitude,  displaying  bristling  backs  and 
bared  gnashing  tushes  to  a  hostile  world. 

They  are — these  wildings  of  the  hedge — the  counter- 
parts in  the  vegetable  world  of  the  creatures  called 
"  vermin  "  in  the  animal  kingdom.  In  the  recesses 
of  their  thorny  intertwining  boughs,  and  deep  down 
among  their  tough  ancient  roots,  the  vermin,  the 
banned  ones,  have  their  home  and  refuge — the  quaint 


OLD   CORNISH    HEDGES  41 

hedgehog  and  minute  long-nosed  shrew  ;  black  and 
white  magpie  and  chacking,  tail-shaking  butcher-bird  ; 
adder  and  snake  and  slow-worm  ;  blood-sucking  stoat 
and  weasel  with  flat  heads  and  serpentine  bodies,  and 
their  small  quarry,  rats  and  voles  and  pretty  sharp- 
nosed  wood-mice  with  leaf-like  ear,  and  winter  sleep- 
ing dormice. 

It  was  fortunate  that  in  the  long  ago,  when  our 
progenitors  began  to  take  plots  of  ground  for  culti- 
vation and  pasture,  they  found  out  this  cheap 
ready  way  of  marking  their  boundaries  and  safe- 
guarding their  cattle  and  corn.  We  may  say  they 
planted  better  than  they  knew  :  they  planted  once, 
and  many  and  many  a  hedge — unnumbered  miles  and 
leagues  of  hedges — that  are  now  great  belts  of  thicket, 
were  first  planted  by  man  in  the  remote  past.  Nature 
took  over  the  thin  row  of  thorn  seedlings  and  made 
it  what  it  is,  not  only  the  useful  thing  it  was  intended 
for — a  natural  barbed-wire  entanglement — but  a  thing 
of  beauty  and  a  joy  for  ever. 

In  West  Cornwall,  where  I  first  came  to  know  the 
native  hedge,  they  cannot  have  these  belts  of  thicket, 
rich  in  a  varied  plant  and  animal  life.  It  is  a  country 
of  moors  and  rugged  stony  hills  where  nothing 
flourishes  but  heath  and  furze  and  bracken.  The 
farming  folk  have  succeeded  in  long  time  in  creating 
small  arable  and  grass  fields  in  the  midst  of  this 
desolation,  but  they  cannot  grow  trees  on  account 
of  the  violent  winds  charged  with  salt  moisture  that 
blow  incessantly  from  the  Atlantic.  If  the  farmer 
plants  a  few  trees  so  that  he  may  one  day  eat  an 


42  THE   LAND'S   END 

apple  of  his  own  growing  and  sit  in  the  shade,  he 
must  build  a  wall  eight  or  ten  feet  high  to  protect 
them  from  the  salt  blast,  and  he  may  then  die  of  old 
age  before  the  apple  is  ripe  or  the  shade  created. 
Nor  can  he  grow  a  hedge  :  the  furze,  it  is  true, 
abounds  everywhere,  but  it  is  a  most  intractable  plant 
that  will  go  (or  grow)  its  own  wild  way,  and  no  man 
has  yet  subdued  it  to  his  will  and  made  it  serve  as  a 
hedge.  Yet  even  in  this  wind-vexed  land  a  few  self- 
planted  trees  may  be  seen. 

You  find  them  in  the  strip  of  farm  country  between 
the  hills  and  sea,  in  hollows  and  under  high  banks,  or 
where  a  mass  of  rock  affords  them  shelter  ;  and  they 
are  mostly  hawthorns  and  blackthorns  with  a  few 
hardy  bush-like  trees  of  other  kinds.  They  are  like 
the  trees  and  bushes  on  the  most  exposed  coasts  in 
Yorkshire  and  in  other  places,  growing  all  one  way, 
lying  close  to  and  sometimes  actually  on  the  ground, 
stretching  out  their  branches  and  every  twig  towards 
the  inland  country.  The  sight  of  these  wind- 
tormented,  one-sided  trees  fascinates  me  and  I  stay 

long  to  look  at  them. 

A  bristled  tree 
With  branches  cedared  by  the  salten  gale, 

Stretched  back,  as  if  with  wings  that  cannot  flee, 

is  how  Gordon  Hake  describes  the  appearance,  seeing, 
as  I  do,  the  desire  and  struggle  to  escape — to  fly  from 
that  pitiless  persecution.  But  the  "wings"  I  do  not 
see  :  in  summer  the  foliage  is  to  my  sight  but  a  ragged 
mantle  ;  in  winter  the  human  expression  is  strongest 
and  most  pathetic.  Held  by  the  feet  in  the  grip  of 


OLD   CORNISH   HEDGES  43 

earth,  the  beaten  bush  strains  to  get  away ;  it  suggests 
the  figure  of  a  person  crawling,  or  trying  to  crawl,  the 
knee-like  joints  on  the  ground,  the  body-like  trunk 
thrown  forward,  the  long  bare  branches  and  terminal 
twigs,  like  the  brown,  thin  naked  arms  and  claw-like 
opened  fingers  of  a  starving  scourged  slave  in  the 
tropics,  extended  imploringly  towards  the  land. 

This  being  the  nature  of  the  country  the  farmer  can 
but  hedge  his  land  and  fields  with  stone  :  he  is  in  a 
measure  compelled  to  do  so,  since  the  earth  is  full  of 
it  and  the  land  strewn  with  boulders  ;  to  make  a  field 
he  must  remove  it  and  bestow  it  somewhere.  Now 
after  centuries  of  this  process  of  removing  and  piling 
up  stones,  the  farm  land  has  become  covered  over  with 
a  network  of  these  enduring  hedges,  or  fences,  inter- 
secting each  other  at  all  angles  ;  and  viewed  from  a 
hill-top  the  country  has  the  appearance  of  a  patched 
quilt  made  of  pieces  of  all  sizes  and  every  possible 
shape,  and  of  all  shades  of  green  from  darkest  gorse 
to  the  delicate  and  vivid  greens  of  the  young  winter 
grass. 

That  half-reclaimed  district,  especially  the  strip  of 
coast  from  St.  Ives  Bay  to  Cape  Cornwall,  was  a  good 
winter  hunting  ground,  and  I  spent  many  weeks  in 
ranging  about  the  fields  and  waste  or  incult  places 
among  them.  Here  you  can  wander  at  will,  without 
fear  of  hurting  the  farmer's  feelings,  as  in  Devonshire, 
by  walking  on  his  land.  The  cultivation  is  little,  the 
fields  being  mostly  grass  :  the  small  farm-house  is  out 
of  sight  somewhere  behind  the  stone  hedges  ;  it  is 
rare  to  meet  with  a  human  being,  and  the  few  cows  or 


44  THE   LAND'S   END 

calves  you  occasionally  come  across  follow  you  about 
as  if  only  too  pleased  to  have  a  visitor.  Climbing 
over  the  next  hedge  into  the  next  field  you  find 
nobody  there  but  a  pig  who  stares  at  you,  then  wel- 
comes you  with  a  good-humoured  grunt ;  or  an  old 
solitary  plough-horse  ;  or  no  semi-human  domestic 
creature  at  all,  only  a  crowd  of  busy  starlings  ;  or 
starlings  mixed  with  daws,  field-fares,  missel-thrushes 
and  a  few  wagtails  ;  or  a  couple  of  magpies,  or  a 
small  flock  of  wintering  curlews  to  be  found  day  after 
day  on  the  same  spot.  After  crossing  two  or  three 
such  fields  you  come  upon  an  unreclaimed  patch,  or 
belt,  where  grey-lichened  rocks  are  mixed  with  masses 
of  old  furze  bushes,  and  heath  and  tussocks  of  pale 
brome-grass.  A  lonely,  silent,  peaceful  place,  where, 
albeit  a  habitation  of  man  for  untold  centuries,  it  is 
wild  Nature  still. 

Here,  with  eyes  and  mind  occupied  with  the  bird, 
I  did  not  at  first  pay  much  attention  to  the  hedges  :  I 
simply  got  over  them,  or,  in  thorny  and  boggy  places, 
walked  on  them,  but  eventually  they  began  to  exercise 
an  attraction,  and  I  began  to  recognise  that  these,  too, 
like  the  planted  hedges  of  other  districts,  were  man's 
creation  but  in  part,  since  Nature  had  added  much 
to  make  them  what  they  are.  Human  hands  first 
raised  them  :  the  process  is  going  on  all  the  time  ; 
the  labourer,  the  cow-boy,  the  farmer  himself,  when 
there  is  nothing  else  to  do,  goes  out  and  piles  up 
stones  to  stop  a  gap  the  cattle  have  made,  to  add  to 
the  height  or  length  of  an  old  hedge,  and  so  on,  but 
the  wall  once  made  is  taken  over  by  Nature  as  in  the 


OLD   CORNISH   HEDGES  45 

case  of  the  planted  hedge.  She  softens  and  darkens 
the  crude  harsh  surface,  clothes  it  in  grey  and  yellow 
lichens  and  cushioned  green  moss,  and  decorates  it 
with  everything  that  will  grow  on  it,  before  the  time 
comes  for  her  to  ruin  and  finally  to  obliterate.  But 
what  time  is  needed  here  for  demolition  with  such  a 
material  as  granite  to  work  on,  where  there  are  no 
trees  to  insinuate  their  roots  into  the  crevices,  slowly 
to  expand  the  pliant  fibres  into  huge  woody  wedges  to 
thrust  the  loose  stones  apart  and  finally  to  pull  them 
down  !  We  can  imagine  how  slow  the  destructive 
processes  are  when  we  look  at  innumerable  Cornish 
crosses  scattered  over  the  county,  showing  clearly  the 
lines  cut  on  them  in  the  early  days  of  Christianity  in 
this  district.  Still  more  do  we  see  it  in  the  ancient 
sacred  stones — the  cromlechs,  coits,  hurlers  and  holed 
stones,  moor-stones  or  "  merry  maidens,"  and  many 
others — which  have  stood  and  resisted  the  disintegrat- 
ing effect  of  the  weather  since  prehistoric  times.  The 
wall  built  is  practically  everlasting,  but  Nature  works 
slowly  on  it,  and  the  hedges  I  had  about  me  differed 
greatly  on  this  account,  from  the  rude  walls  raised 
but  yesterday  or  a  dozen  or  twenty  years  ago  to  those 
which  must  have  stood  for  centuries  or  for  a  thousand 
years  or  longer.  Indeed,  it  was  the  appearance  of 
extreme  antiquity  in  one  of  these  hedges,  which  I 
often  crossed  and  sometimes  walked  on,  which  first 
excited  my  interest  in  the  subject.  It  looked,  and 
probably  is,  older  than  the  walls  of  Silchester,  which 
date  back  1700  or  1800  years,  and  are  now  being 
gradually  pulled  down  by  the  trees  that  have  grown 


46  THE   LAND'S   END 

upon  them.  It  was  the  longest  of  the  old  hedges  I 
found,  beginning  among  the  masses  of  granite  on  the 
edge  of  the  cliff,  and  winding  away  inland  to  lose 
itself  eventually  among  the  rocks  and  gullies  and 
furze-thickets  at  the  foot  of  a  great  boulder-strewn 
hill.  Its  sinuosity  struck  me  as  a  mark  of  extreme 
age,  as  in  this  it  resembled  the  huge  prehistoric  walls 
or  earthworks  made  of  chalk  on  the  downs  in 
Southern  England,  which  meander  in  an  extraordinary 
way.  It  was  also  larger  than  the  other  hedges,  which 
crossed  its  winding  course  at  all  angles,  being  in  most 
parts  six  to  seven  feet  high,  and  exceedingly  broad  ; 
moreover,  where  the  stones  could  be  seen  they  ap- 
peared to  be  more  closely  fitted  together  than  in  other 
hedges.  Most  of  the  stonework  was,  however,  pretty 
well  covered  over,  in  some  places  with  a  very  thick 
turf,  in  others  by  furze  and  bracken,  rooted  in  the 
crevices  and  in  places  hiding  the  wall  in  a  dense 
thicket. 

But  of  all  the  plants  growing  on  it  the  ivy  was  most 
remarkable.  It  is  not  a  plant  that  flourishes  in  this 
district,  where  it  has  as  hard  a  struggle  as  any  tree  to 
maintain  its  existence.  It  is  found  only  in  sheltered 
situations  on  this  coast,  in  the  villages,  and  on  the 
landward  side  of  steep  banks  and  large  masses  of  rock. 
On  this  old  wall  there  was  really  no  shelter,  since  the 
furious  blasts  from  the  sea  swept  both  sides  of  it  with 
the  same  violence.  Yet  in  places  the  ivy  had  got  pos- 
session of  it,  but  it  was  an  ivy  very  much  altered  in 
character  by  the  unfavourable  conditions  from  that 
greenest  luxuriant  plant  we  know  so  well.  In  place  of 


OLD   CORNISH   HEDGES 


47 


the  dark  mass  of  foliage,  the  leaves  were  few  and  small 
and  far  apart,  so  that  viewing  the  wall  from  a  little 
distance  away  you  would  not  notice  that  it  had  any 
ivy  growing  on  it,  but  would  see  that  the  more  naked 
portions  were  covered  with  a  growth  of  rope-like 
stems.  The  wonder  is  that  with  so  few  leaves  it 
can  grow  so  much  wood  !  The  stems,  which  are 


HEDGE   AT   ST.    IVES 

not  thick,  are  smooth  and  of  a  pale  grey  colour  and 
grow  in  and  out  of  the  crevices,  and  cross  and  re- 
cross  one  another,  fitting  into  all  the  inequalities  of 
the  stony  surface  and  in  places  where  they  cover  the 
wall  looking  like  a  numerous  brood  or  tangle  of  grey 
serpents. 

This  snaky  appearance  of  the  almost  leafless  old 
wall-ivy  fascinated  me,  and  I  went  often  to  look  at  it 
on  the  same  spot  and  was  never  tired  of  the  sight. 


48  THE   LAND'S   END 

It  struck  me  as  curious  that  the  woody  ivy  should 
have  this  aspect,  since  the  wall  itself  in  some  parts 
distinctly  suggested  the  serpentine  form  and  appear- 
ance. Here  again  I  was  reminded  of  some  of  the 
long  earthworks  or  walls  on  the  Wiltshire  and  Dorset- 
shire downs — the  rounded,  thickly  turfed  bank  which 
winds  serpent-like  over  the  hills  and  across  the  valleys, 
and  which  often  has  a  green  colour  differing  slightly 
from  that  of  the  earth  it  lies  across. 

The  old  Cornish  hedge  had  this  aspect  in  places 
where  it  was  clothed  with  turf,  and,  viewed  from  a 
distance  and  seen  winding  about  in  great  curves 
across  the  rough  brown  heath  and  furze-grown  earth, 
the  serpentine  appearance  was  very  marked. 

Whether  or  not  the  Cornish  antiquaries  have  paid 
any  attention  to  these  ancient  hedges  I  do  not  know. 
The  only  native  I  came  across  who  had  anything  to  say 
about  them  was  a  peasant  farmer  whose  acquaintance 
1  made  at  his  cottage-like  farm,  a  few  miles  from  the 
hedge  I  have  described.  He  was  a  man  of  seventy- 
nine  but  vigorous  still  and  of  a  lively  mind.  When 
I  spoke  to  him  about  the  old  hedge  and  its  ancient 
appearance,  he  said  he  had  known  it  all  his  life  ;  that 
he  was  a  native  of  a  small  hamlet  close  to  the  hedge, 
and  at  the  age  of  seven,  when  he  first  took  to  birds'- 
nesting,  he  used  to  hunt  along  it  on  every  summer 
day  and  came  to  know  it  as  well  as  he  knew  the  fence 
round  his  garden  and  the  walls  of  the  cottage  he  lived 
in.  It  had  not,  he  assured  me,  changed  in  the  least 
during  the  last  seventy  or  seventy-two  years  :  it  was 
to-day  exactly  what  it  was  in  his  early  boyhood,  with 


OLD   CORNISH   HEDGES  49 

thick  turf  and  furze  and  bracken  and  woody  ivy 
covering  it  in  the  same  way  in  the  same  old  places. 
This  made  him  think  it  must  be  very,  very  old. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  his  life,  although  a  long  one, 
was  but  a  short  period  to  measure  by  in  such  a  case, 
that  if  he  could  have  consulted  his  father  and  grand- 
father and  his  remoter  ancestors  back  to  the  time 
when  the  last  Cornish  king  was  cast  out  by  William 
the  Bastard,  they  would  all  have  given  the  same 
testimony  and  said  that  the  hedge  was  very  old  when 
they  knew  it. 


CHAPTER  V 

BOLERIUM:   THE   END   OF   ALL 
THE   LAND 

Cliff  scenery  and  headlands — The  Land's  End  sentiment — Pilgrims 
and  how  they  are  affected — Wilkie  Collins — The  child's  vision — 
Books  on  Cornwall — d  Trip  to  the  Far  West — Sir  Humphry 
Davy — Wesley — Winter  nights  at  the  Land's  End — Lighthouses 
— Associations  and  speculations — The  scene  of  great  tragedies  in 
the  past. 

EVERY  day,  even  in  winter,  if  the  weather  be 
not  too  bad,  but  chiefly  during  the  nine  months 
from   March  to  November,  pilgrims  come   to 
this  wind-swept,  wave-beaten  point  to  gaze  and  set 
their  feet  upon  the  little  rocky  promontory  of  the 
Land's  End.      It  is  less   bold  and   impressive  than 
many  others  of  the  hundred  headlands  at  this  western 
extremity  of  England  between  St.  Ives  and  Mount's 
Bay.     From  this  or  that  projecting  point,  command- 
So 


THE   END   OF   ALL   THE   LAND       51 

ing  a  view  of  the  coastline  for  some  distance,  one 
may  count  a  dozen  or  more  of  these  headlands  thrust 
out  aslant  like  stupendous  half-ruined  buttresses  sup- 
porting the  granite  walls  of  the  cliff.  They  are  of  a 
sullen  brown  colour  and  rough  harsh  aspect,  and  in 
places  have  the  appearance  of  being  built  up  of  huge 
square  blocks  of  granite,  and  at  other  points  they 
form  stacks  of  columns  as  at  the  Giant's  Causeway. 
The  summits  of  these  headlands  are  often  high, 
resembling  ruinous  castles  placed  on  projecting  points 
of  the  cliff;  they  are  confused  masses  of  rocks  of 
many  shapes,  piled  loosely  one  upon  the  other,  their 
exposed  surfaces  clothed  over  with  long  coarse  grey 
lichen.  Large  gulls,  daws  and  cormorants  sit  or 
stand  here  and  there  on  the  ledges  and  prominent 
points,  the  herring  gulls  clamorous  at  the  sight  of  a 
human  form  ;  the  restive  daws  quitting  their  stands 
to  wheel  about  at  intervals,  rising  and  falling,  soon  to 
settle  down  again  ;  the  cormorants  silent  and  motion- 
less, standing  erect  with  curved,  snaky  necks,  like 
birds  carved  in  ebony. 

Stealing  quietly  among  these  hoary  masses  of  rock 
you  may  see  a  very  wild  rabbit,  and  on  a  bright,  still, 
winter  day,  if  you  are  singularly  fortunate,  you  may 
catch  sight  of  a  beast  better  worth  seeing,  a  cliff  fox, 
lying  fast  asleep  or  lightly  dozing,  stretched  at  full 
length  on  a  ledge,  looking  intensely  red  in  the  sun- 
shine, and  very  conspicuous  against  the  hoary  lichened 
rock.  This  is  his  home  and  castle,  which  he  shares 
with  the  rabbits  that  know  his  ways,  and  the  birds 
that  are  always  just  out  of  his  reach.  Thus  do  they 


52  THE   LAND'S   END 

live  together  in  one  house  like  one  antagonistic  family 
in  a  strange  artificial  harmony,  and  do  not  mix,  but 
come  and  go  and  move  about  freely,  and  bask  in  the 
warm  sunshine,  and  sit  up  to  rub  their  long  ears  and 
whiskers,  and  spread  out  their  wings  to  dry,  and  preen 
their  feathers.  Peace  and  quiet  in  their  castle,  while 
the  great  waves  roll  in  to  beat  on  its  caverned  walls 
beneath,  making  the  earth  tremble  with  their  measured 
blows,  covering  the  black  rocks  with  dazzling  white 
foam,  and  sending  up  a  mist  of  spray  to  the  summit. 

At  intervals  between  Bay  and  Bay,  a  distance  of 
thirty  miles,  you  come  upon  headlands  of  this  type — 
Cape  Cornwall,  Gurnard's  Head,  Zennor  Cliffs  and 
others,  to  the  north  of  Land's  End,  while  just  south 
of  it  you  have  the  noblest  rock  scenery  of  this  coast, 
including  the  stupendous  cliffs  of  Tol-Pedn-Penwith 
and  Treryn  Dinas,  with  its  famed  Logan  Stone. 
Bolerium  itself,  the  narrow  promontory  of  piled 
rocks  of  the  Land's  End  and  the  flat  bit  of  country 
adjoining  it  is,  sentiment  apart,  one  of  the  least  in- 
teresting points  on  the  coast. 

But  the  sentiment  is  a  very  great  thing  and  in- 
teresting to  observe.  And  this  is  easy,  since  the 
pilgrims  mostly  come  by  way  of  Penzance,  distant 
about  a  dozen  miles,  travelling  in  batches  of  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  or  more,  packed  closely  in  some  public 
conveyance  ;  so  that  one  has  but  to  join  the  crowd 
and,  sitting  among  them,  watch  their  faces  out  of  the 
corners  of  his  eyes.  They  are  a  mixed  company  of 
men  and  women  of  all  conditions,  from  all  parts  of 
the  country,  with  some  Americans  and  Colonials.  It 


THE   END   OF  ALL   THE   LAND       53 

is  indeed  curious  to  see  an  identical  feeling  on  faces 
so  unlike,  from  the  very  young  who  do  not  try  to 
conceal  it,  to  the  very  aged  and  almost  worn-out  globe 
wanderers,  who  are  now  nearly  at  the  end  of  their 


f, 


NEAR  LAND'S  END 

life's  pilgrimage,  and  have  seen  pretty  well  all  that 
was  worth  seeing  on  this  wide  earth  except  this  one 
famous  spot  which  by  chance  has  been  left  to  the 
last.  And  by  and  by,  after  travelling  half  a  dozen 
miles,  they  find  themselves  in  a  land  unlike  any  place 


54  THE   LAND'S   END 

they  know  ;  inhabited,  for  there  are  a  few  small  sad- 
looking  granite  cottages  and  farms  and  hamlets,  but 
of  a  rude  and  desolate  aspect,  and  therefore  in  har- 
mony with  their  emotions  and  preconceived  ideas 
about  the  place.  It  is  a  treeless  barren  country,  hill 
and  moor,  with  furze  and  brown  heath  interspersed 
with  grey  boulder  stones,  the  whole  dominated  by 
the  great  desolate  hill  of  Chapel  Carn  Brea.  The 
travellers  look  out,  straining  their  eyes  to  see  the 
end  ;  but  before  that  comes  the  hilly  country  is  left 
behind,  and  at  the  last  it  is  flat  and  tame  with  a  sad- 
looking  granite-built  village  and  the  grey  sea  beyond. 
One  has  watched  the  bright  eager  look  that  expected 
so  much  fade  out  of  the  various  faces  ;  and  by  the 
time  the  pilgrims  get  down  to  scatter  along  the  cliff 
or  to  go  at  once  to  their  luncheon  at  the  hotel  it  is 
pretty  well  all  gone.  And  if  you  go  back  to  Penzance 
to  join  the  next  lot,  and  then  again,  and  every  day  for 
a  week  or  a  month,  you  will  witness  the  same  thing — 
the  collection  of  unlike  faces  with  the  light  of  the 
same  feeling  in  the  eyes  of  all,  increasing  as  they 
advance  over  that  rude  moorland  country  and  fading 
out  at  the  end  to  that  blank  look — "  Is  this  the  Land's 
End— is  this  all  !  " 

What,  then,  did  they  expect  r  Wilkie  Collins  best 
answers  that  question  in  his  pleasant  book  of  rambles 
written  more  than  half  a  century  ago,  when  he  says 
that  the  Land's  End  is  to  Cornwall  what  Jerusalem  is 
to  the  Holy  Land,  the  great  and  final  object  of  a 
journey  to  the  westernmost  county  of  England,  its 
Ultima  Thule,  where  it  ceases  ;  a  name  that  strikes 


THE   END   OF   ALL   THE  LAND       55 

us  most  in  childhood  when  we  learnt  our  geography  ; 
which  fills  the  minds  of  imaginative  people  with 
visions  of  barrenness  and  solitude  and  dreams  of 
some  lonely  promontory,  the  place  where  the  last 
man  in  England  will  be  found  waiting  for  death  at 
the  end  of  the  world. 

That  is  indeed  the  secret  of  the  visitor's  expectant 
feeling  and  disappointment — the  vague  vision  of  a 
vastness  and  grandeur  and  desolateness  almost  preter- 
natural, conceived  in  childhood,  which  all  the  ex- 
perience of  a  long  life  of  disillusionment  has  been 
powerless  to  eradicate  from  the  mind,  or  to  replace 
with  a  mental  picture  more  in  accord  with  the  reality. 

But  if  this  disillusionment  is  plainly  visible  to  an 
observer  on  the  faces  of  many  visitors,  the  books 
about  Cornwall  tell  a  different  story  ;  .their  writers 
would  have  us  believe  that  the  reality  has  surpassed 
their  expectations,  that  their  emotions  of  admiration 
and  astonishment  have  been  deeply  moved.  When  I 
had  been  some  time  in  Cornwall  and  it  had  taken  hold 
of  me,  I  sat  myself  down  before  a  formidable  array 
of  books  descriptive  of  the  duchy,  only  to  find  that 
reading  them  was  an  exceedingly  wearisome  task.  By 
and  by  I  discovered  something  to  entertain  and  keep 
me  going  ;  this  was  the  grand  business  of  describing 
the  Land's  End  in  a  suitable  manner,  but  more  or  less 
rhetorically  and  charged  with  exalted  feeling,  which 
was  undertaken  in  turn  by  every  visitor.  This  made 
many  a  dull  book  amusing.  I  experienced  a  kind  of 
sporting  interest  in  the  literary  traveller's  progress 
through  the  county,  and  looked  eagerly  forward  to 


56  THE  LAND'S  END 

his  arrival  at  the  famous  spot  where  he  would  have 
to  pull  himself  together  and  launch  himself  bird-like 
from  the  cliffs,  as  it  were,  on  the  void  sublime.  There 
was  great  variety  in  these  utterances,  but  I  think 
the  one  that  diverted  me  most  was  in  a  book  entitled 
A  Trip  to  the  Far  West^  published  in  1840,  as  the 
author,  one  Baker  Peter  Smith,  was  evidently  an 
experimenter  in  words,  some  of  his  own  making  ; 
or  we  might  call  him  an  Early  Victorian  young  man 
in  search  of  a  style. 

"  I  reached  the  Land's  End,"  he  wrote,  "  and  sat 
down  on  a  protuberant  block  of  granite,  close  to  the 
precipice,  overhanging  the  multitangular  rocks  which 
form  an  impenetrable  barrier  against  the  raging  tides 
of  the  mighty  waters."  After  lamenting  that  he  had 
so  little  time  in  which  to  survey  the  "  multicapsular 
curiosities  of  the  region,"  he  proceeds  :  "  The  local 
sublimity  of  the  Land's  End  affords  a  commanding 
view  of  scenick  expanse  ;  and  the  colossal  columns  of 
rock  give  an  awful  effect  to  the  stupendous  vision  ; 
whilst,  added  to  these  grave  and  elevating  sentiments, 
consequent  on  so  grand  a  sight,  the  sense  of  hearing 
also  acts  upon  the  mind  :  by  the  distant  roar  of  the 
angry  sea,  ascending  from  the  caverns  below,  and  the 
screaming  of  the  Cornish  chough  assailing  you  from 
above  and  every  side,"  and  so  on.  He  concludes  : — 
"The  entranced  spectator  has  no  election,  but  is 
engrossed  with  admiration  of  that  Great  Power  by 
the  fiat  of  whose  mere  volition  nature's  chaos  was 
thus  harmonized  and  stamped  with  the  glorifying  im- 
press of  multiplicious  beauty." 


THE   END   OF  ALL   THE  LAND       57 

One  is  glad  that  cormorant,  book-devouring  Time, 
has  spared  us  Baker  Peter  Smith. 

But  there  are  a  few  noble  passages  to  be  found  as 
well,  and  I  think  this  one  of  Humphry  Davy,  writ- 
ten in  youth  before  the  flower  of  poesy  withered  in 
him,  pleases  me  the  best  : — 

On  the  sea 

The  sunbeams  tremble  and  the  purple  light 
Illumes  the  dark  Bolerium,  seat  of  storms ! 
Dear  are  his  granite  wilds,  his  schistine  rocks 
Encircled  by  the  waves,  where  to  the  gale 
The  haggard  cormorant  shrieks,  and,  far  beyond 
Where  the  great  ocean  mingles  with  the  sky, 
Behold  the  cloud-like  islands,  grey  in  mist. 

Another  notable  utterance  was  that  of  John 
Wesley,  when  on  a  Sunday  in  September,  1743, 
after  preaching  to  the  people  at  Sennen,  he  went  down 
to  look  at  the  Land's  End.  "  It  was  an  awful  sight," 
he  wrote.  "  But  how  will  this  melt  away  when  God 
ariseth  in  judgment !  The  sea  beneath  doth  indeed 
boil  like  a  pot.  One  would  think  the  deep  to  be 
hoary.  But  though  they  swell  yet  can  they  not 
prevail.  He  shall  set  their  bounds  which  they  cannot 
pass." 

There  spoke  the  founder  of  Methodism,  saturated 
in  Biblical  phraseology  until  it  gushed  spontaneously 
from  him  even  as  its  song  or  cry  from  a  bird.  He 
had  forgotten  his  own  language,  as  it  were,  and  even 
in  an  exalted  moment  in  this  grey  north  land  could 
only  express  himself  in  these  old  Asiatic  figures  of 
speech. 

To   return  from  this  digression.      Although  the 


58  THE   LAND'S   END 

vague  image  of  an  imagined  Land's  End  fades  from 
the  mind  and  is  perhaps  lost  when  the  reality  is 
known,  the  ancient  associations  of  the  place  remain, 
and,  if  a  visit  be  rightly  timed,  they  may  invest  it 
with  a  sublimity  and  fascination  not  its  own.  I 
loitered  many  days  near  that  spot  in  midwinter,  in 
the  worst  possible  weather,  but  even  when  pining  for 
a  change  to  blue  skies  and  genial  sunshine  I  blessed 
the  daily  furious  winds  which  served  to  keep  the 
pilgrims  away,  and  to  half  blot  out  the  vulgar  modern 
buildings  with  rain  and  mist  from  the  Atlantic.  At 
dark  I  would  fight  my  way  against  the  wind  to  the 
cliff,  and  down  by  the  sloping  narrow  neck  of  land  to 
the  masses  of  loosely  piled  rocks  at  its  extremity.  It 
was  a  very  solitary  place  at  that  hour,  where  one 
feared  not  to  be  intruded  on  by  any  other  night- 
wanderer  in  human  shape.  The  raving  of  the  wind 
among  the  rocks  ;  the  dark  ocean — exceedingly  dark 
except  when  the  flying  clouds  were  broken  and  the 
stars  shining  in  the  clear  spaces  touched  the  big  black 
incoming  waves  with  a  steely  grey  light ;  the  jagged 
isolated  rocks,  on  which  so  many  ships  have  been 
shattered,  rising  in  awful  blackness  from  the  spectral 
foam  that  appeared  and  vanished  and  appeared  again  ; 
the  multitudinous  hoarse  sounds  of  the  sea,  with 
throbbing  and  hollow  booming  noises  in  the  caverns 
beneath — all  together  served  to  bring  back  something 
of  the  old  vanished  picture  or  vision  of  Bolerium 
as  we  first  imagine  it.  The  glare  from  the  vari- 
ous lighthouses  visible  at  this  point  only  served 
to  heighten  the  inexpressibly  sombre  effect,  since 


LAND'S  END 


To  face  page  58 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE   END   OF   ALL   THE   LAND       59 

shining  from  a  distance  they  made  the  gloomy  world 
appear  vaster.  Down  in  the  south,  twenty-five  miles 
away,  the  low  clouds  were  lit  up  at  short  intervals  by 
wide  white  flashes  as  of  sheet  lightning  from  the 
Lizard  lights,  the  most  powerful  of  all  lights,  the  re- 
flection of  which  may  be  seen  at  a  distance  of  sixty  or 
seventy  miles  at  sea.  In  front  of  the  Land's  End 
promontory,  within  five  miles  of  it,  was  the  angry  red 
glare  from  the  Longships  tower,  and  further  away  to 
the  left  the  white  revolving  light  of  the  Wolf  light- 
house. 

It  was  perhaps  on  some  tempestuous  winter  night 
at  the  Land's  End  that  the  fancy,  told  as  a  legend  or 
superstitious  belief  in  J.  H.  Pearce's  Cornish  Drolls, 
occurred  to  him  or  to  some  one,  that  the  Wolf  Rock 
was  the  habitation  of  a  great  black  dog,  a  terrible 
supernatural  beast  that  preys  on  the  souls  of  the 
dead.  For  the  rock  lies  directly  in  the  route  of 
those  who  die  on  the  mainland  and  journey  over  the 
sea  to  their  ultimate  abode,  the  Scilly  Isles  :  and  when 
the  wind  blows  hard  against  them  and  they  are  beaten 
down  like  migrating  birds  and  fly  close  to  the  sur- 
face, he  is  able  as  they  come  over  the  rock  to  capture 
and  devour  them. 

During  these  vigils,  when  I  was  in  a  sense  the 
"  last  man  "  in  that  most  solitary  place,  its  associations, 
historical  and  mythical,  exercised  a  strange  power 
over  me.  Here,  because  of  its  isolation,  or  remote- 
ness, from  Saxon  England,  because  it  is  the  very  end 
of  the  land,  "the  westeste  point  of  the  land  of 
Cornewalle,"  the  ancient  wild  spirit  of  the  people 


60  THE   LAND'S   END 

remained  longest  unchanged,  and  retained  much  of 
its  distinctive  character  down  to  within  recent  times. 
It  was  a  Celtic  people  with  an  Iberian  strain,  even  as 
in  Wales  and  Ireland  and  Scotland.  Now,  either 
because  of  a  different  proportion  of  the  dark  aborigi- 
nal blood,  or  of  the  infusion  of  Scandinavian  and 
other  racial  elements,  or  some  other  cause,  these  four 
Celtic  families  differ  very  widely,  as  we  know  ;  but 
we  think,  or  at  all  events  are  accustomed  to  say,  that 
they  are  an  imaginative,  a  poetic  people.  Doubtless 
in  Cornwall  this  spirit  was  always  weakest,  since  it 
never  succeeded  in  expressing  itself  in  any  permanent 
form  ;  but  albeit  feeble  it  probably  did  exist,  and  in 
this  very  district,  this  end  of  all  the  land,  it  must 
have  lingered  longest.  If  this  be  so  it  is  strange 
to  think  that  it  was  perhaps  finally  extinguished  by 
the  Wesley  brothers — one  with  the  poetry  of  the 
Hebrews  ever  on  his  lips,  the  other  with  his  own 
lyrical  gift ! 

It  may  be  said  that  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  light  must  have  been  so  feeble  that  it 
would  have  soon  expired  of  itself  if  Methodism  had 
not  trampled  out  the  last  faint  sparks  ;  and  it  may 
also  be  said  that  the  Cornish  people  did  not  lose 
much,  seeing  that  this  root  had  never  flowered  ;  that 
they  had  never  sung  and  never  said  anything  worth 
remembering  ;  while  on  the  other  hand  their  gain 
was  a  substantial  one,  for  though  it  imposed  an  ugly 
form  of  religion  and  ugly  houses  of  worship,  it 
changed  them  (so  the  Methodists  say)  from  brutality 
and  vice  to  what  they  are — a  temperate,  law-abiding 


THE   END   OF   ALL  THE   LAND       61 

people.     But  I  shall  have  something  more  to  say  on 
this  subject  in  a  later  chapter. 

Here  among  the  rocks  by  night  I  think  less  of 
these  moral  changes,  and  of  other  events  within 
historical  times,  than  of  those  which  came  before,  of 
which  we  have  no  certain  knowledge.  We  can  only 
assume  that  in  the  successive  invasions  during  the 
Bronze  Age  this  was  invariably  the  last  place  con- 
quered and  last  refuge  of  a  beaten  fugitive  people. 

I  recall  here  a  strange  phenomenon  in  wild-bird 
life  occasionally  witnessed  in  this  district.  Cornwall 
has  a  singularly  mild  and  equable  climate,  but  great 
frosts  do  at  long  intervals  invade  it  and  reach  to  the 
very  extremity  of  the  land  :  and  when  a  cold  wave, 
like  that  of  the  winter  of  1906-7,  travels  west,  the 
birds  flying  for  life  before  it  advance  along  the 
Cornish  country  until  they  come  to  a  point  beyond 
which  they  cannot  go,  for  the  affrighting  ocean  is 
before  them  and  they  are  spent  with  hunger  and  cold. 
They  come  in  a  continuous  stream,  to  congregate  in 
tens  of  thousands,  covering  the  cliffs  and  fields  and 
stone  hedges  ;  and  the  villagers  turn  out  with  guns 
and  nets  and  sticks  and  stones  to  get  their  fill  of 
killing. 

So  in  the  dreadful  past,  whenever  a  wave  of  Celtic 
conquest  swept  west,  the  unhappy  people  were  driven 
further  and  further  from  the  Tamar  along  that  tongue 
of  land,  their  last  refuge,  but  where  there  were  no 
rivers  and  mountains  to  stay  the  pursuers,  nor  forests 
and  marshes  in  which  to  hide,  until  they  could  go  no 
further,  for  the  salt  sea  was  in  front  of  them.  They 


62  THE   LAND'S   END 

too,  like  the  frost-afflicted  birds,  gathered  in  thousands 
and  sat  crowded  in  every  headland  and  promontory 
and  every  stony  hill  summit,  ever  turning  their  worn 
dusty  faces  and  glazed  eyes  to  the  east  to  watch  for 
the  coming  of  the  foe — the  strong,  fiendish,  broad- 
faced,  blue-eyed  men  with  metal  weapons  in  their 
hands,  spear  and  sword  and  battle-axe. 

These  are  the  people  1  think  about  on  dark  tem- 
pestuous evenings  in  this  solitary  place  ;  Bolerium  is 
haunted  by  the  vast  ghostly  multitude. 


CHAPTER  VI 
CASTLES    BY  THE   SEA 

The  rocky  forelands — Delightful  days — Colour  of  the  sea — Wild-bird 
life — Montgomery's  Pelican  Island — Gulls  and  daws — We  envy 
birds  their  wings — The  sense  of  sublimity — Cormorants — Ravens 
and  superstition — Gurnard's  Head — A  first  visit — A  siesta  in  a 
dangerous  place — The  hunter's  vision. 

IF  "  dark  Bolerium  "  seemed  best  on  tempestuous 
midwinter  evenings  because  of  the  spirit  of  the 
place,    the    sentiment,    it   was    not   so   with    the 
numerous  other  forelands  along  this  rude  coast.     I 
haunted  them  by  day,  and  the  finer  the  weather  the 
better  I  liked  them.     It  is  true  that  they  too  have 
dark    associations    from    which    one    cannot    wholly 
escape.     The  huge  masses  of  rock  rising  high  above 
the  cliff  on   many   of  these  promontories   have  the 

63 


64  THE   LAND'S   END 

appearance  of  gigantic  castles  by  the  sea,  and  that 
they  served  as  castles  to  the  ancient  inhabitants  of 
the  land  we  know,  as  in  many  instances  the  primitive 
earthworks,  the  trench  and  embankment  raised  to  cut 
them  off  from  the  land,  remain  to  this  day.  But 
the  thought  of  the  "  dreadful  past "  is  not  so  in- 
sistent in  these  castles,  which  were  my  houses  by 
the  sea,  as  at  the  Land's  End  promontory,  and 
would  almost  vanish  in  the  brilliant  sunshine  and 
in  view  of  the  wide  expanse  of  ocean  flecked  with 
dazzling  foam. 

I  could  hardly  imagine  a  higher  pleasure  than  was 
mine  on  many  a  bright  day  in  winter  and  spring, 
when  I  had  the  whole  coast  pretty  well  to  myself  and 
spent  long  hours  in  rambling  from  point  to  point 
and  in  gazing  out  on  the  sea  from  my  seat  on 
some  rocky  pile  that  crowned  one  of  the  bolder 
headlands. 

I  had  heard  a  good  deal  about  the  beautiful  colour 
of  the  sea  in  these  parts,  yet  was  often  surprised  at 
the  sight  of  it.  I  had  seen  no  such  blues  and  greens 
on  any  other  part  of  the  British  coast ;  and  no  such 
purples  in  the  shallower  waters  within  the  caves  and 
near  the  cliffs  where  the  rocks  beneath  were  over- 
grown with  seaweed.  Where  these  great  purple 
patches  appeared  on  the  pure  brilliant  green  it  was 
veritably  a  "  wine-purple  sea  "  and  looked  as  if  hun- 
dreds of  hogsheads  of  claret  or  Burgundy  had  been 
emptied  into  it. 

But  the  sea  and  its  colour  and  the  joy  of  a  vast 
expanse  would  not  have  drawn  me  so  often  to  the 


CASTLES   BY  THE   SEA  65 

castled  forelands  nor  held  me  so  long  but  for  the 
birds  that  haunted  them,  seeing  that  this  visible  world 
is  to  me  but  a  sad  and  empty  place  without  wonder- 
ful life  and  the  varied  forms  of  life,  which  are  in  har- 
mony with  it,  and  give  it  a  meaning,  and  a  grace  and 
beauty  and  splendour  not  its  own.  If  there  be  no 
visible  wild  life,  then  I  am  like  that  wandering  being 
or  spirit  in  Montgomery's  Pelican  Island,  who  was 
alone  on  the  earth  before  life  was,  and  had  no  know- 
ledge or  intimation  of  any  intelligence  but  its  own  ; 
who  roamed  over  the  seas  that  tumbled  round  the 
globe  for  thousands  and  thousands  of  years,  flying 
ever  from  its  own  loneliness  and  vainly  seeking 
comfort  and  happiness  in  loving  and  being  the 
companion  of  wind  and  cloud  and  wave,  and  day 
and  night,  and  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  and  all 
inanimate  things. 

Sitting  on  a  rock  on  the  edge  of  one  of  these  head- 
lands 1  could  watch  those  glorious  fishers  in  the  sea, 
the  gannets,  by  the  hour  ;  but  this  bird  is  so  great, 
being  now  the  greatest  left  to  us  in  Cornwall,  or 
rather  in  the  seas  that  wash  its  shores,  and  its  habits 
so  interesting,  that  I  must  by  and  by  devote  an  en- 
tire chapter  to  it.  Gulls  and  daws  were  the  common 
species,  always  to  be  seen  floating  and  wheeling  about 
the  promontory,  a  black  and  white  company,  with 
sharp  yelping  voices  and  hoarse  and  laughter-like 
cries  ;  never  wholly  free  from  anxiety  when  I  was  by, 
never  fully  convinced  of  my  peaceful  intentions. 
Their  habits  are  well  known  :  I  was  not  expecting  any 
new  discovery  about  them,  it  was  simply  the  delight 


66  THE   LAND'S   END 

of  seeing  them  which  kept  me  to  the  crags.     Sturge 
Moore  says  in  a  poem  on  "  Wings  "  :— 

That  man  who  wishes  not  for  wings, 

Must  be  the  slave  of  care ; 
For  birds  that  have  them  move  so  well 

And  softly  through  the  air  : 
They  venture  far  into  the  sky, 
If  not  so  far  as  thoughts  and  angels  fly. 

Feather  from  under  feather  springs  ; 

All  open  like  a  fan ; 
Our  eyes  upon  their  beauty  dwell 

And  marvel  at  the  plan 
By  which  things  made  for  use  so  rare 
Are  powerful  and  delicate  and  fair. 

In  Calderon's  celebrated  drama,  Life's  a  Dream, 
when  Sigismund  laments  his  miserable  destiny,  com- 
paring it  with  that  of  the  wild  creatures  which  in- 
habited the  forest  where  he  is  kept  a  prisoner,  the 
contrast  between  his  lot  and  theirs  seems  greatest 
when  he  considers  the  birds,  perfect  in  form,  lovely  in 
colouring,  graceful  in  their  motions,  and  so  wonder- 
ful in  their  faculty  of  flight  ;  while  he,  a  being  with 
a  higher  nature,  a  greater,  more  aspiring  soul,  had  no 
such  liberty  !  We  need  not  be  so  unhappy  as  the 
Polish  prince  to  envy  the  birds  their  freedom.  I 
watch  and  am  never  tired  of  watching  their  play. 
They  rise  and  fall  and  circle,  and  swerve  to  this  side 
and  to  that,  and  are  like  sportive  flies  in  a  room  which 
has  the  wind-roughened  ocean  for  a  floor,  and  the 
granite  cliffs  for  walls,  and  the  vast  void  sky  for 
ceiling.  The  air  is  their  element  :  they  float  on  it 


CASTLES   BY   THE   SEA  67 

and  are  borne  by  it,  abandoned  to  it,  effortless,  even 
as  a  ball  of  thistledown  is  borne  ;  and  then,  merely 
by  willing  it,  without  any  putting  forth  of  strength, 
without  a  pulsation,  to  rise  vertically  a  thousand  feet, 
to  dwell  again  and  float  upon  an  upper  current, 
to  survey  the  world  from  a  greater  altitude  and  re- 
joice in  a  vaster  horizon.  To  fly  like  that !  To  do 
it  all  unconsciously,  merely  by  bringing  this  or  that 
set  of  ten  thousand  flight  muscles  into  play,  as  we 
will  to  rise,  to  float,  to  fall,  to  go  this  way  or  that — to 
let  the  wind  do  it  all  for  us,  as  it  were,  while  the  sight 
is  occupied  in  seeing  and  the  mind  is  wholly  free  ! 
The  balloons  and  other  wretched  machines  to  which 
men  tie  themselves  to  mount  above  the  earth  serve 
only  to  make  the  birds'  lot  more  enviable.  I  would 
fly  and  live  like  them  in  the  air,  not  merely  for  the 
pleasure  of  the  aerial  exercise,  but  also  to  experience 
in  larger  measure  the  sense  of  sublimity. 

But  this  is  a  delusion,  seeing  that  we  possess  such 
a  sense  only  because  we  are  bound  to  earth,  because 
vast  cliffs  overhanging  the  sea  and  other  altitudes  are 
in  some  degree  dangerous.  At  all  events  Nature 
says  they  are,  and  we  are  compelled  to  bow  to  her 
whether  we  know  better  or  not.  We  cannot  get  over 
the  instinct  of  the  heavy  mammalian  that  goes  on  the 
ground,  whose  inherited  knowledge  is  that  it  is  death 
or  terrible  injury  to  fall  from  a  considerable  height. 
Only  so  long  as  we  are  quite  safe  is  this  instinct  a 
pleasurable  one  ;  but  when  we  look  over  the  edge  of 
a  sheer  precipice,  how  often,  in  spite  of  reason,  does 
the  pleasure,  the  fearful  joy,  lose  itself  in  apprehen- 


68  THE   LAND'S   END 

sion  !  Could  we  know  that  it  would  not  hurt  us  to 
drop  off,  purposely  or  by  accident,  that  the  air  itself 
and  a  mysterious  faculty  in  us  would  sustain  us, 
that  it  would  .no  more  hurt  us  to  be  flung  from 
the  summit  of  a  cliff  than  it  would  hurt  a  jackdaw, 
we  should  be  as  the  bird  is,  without  a  sense  of  sub- 
limity. 

Daw  and  herring  gull,  the  most  abundant  species, 
were  but  two  of  several  kinds  I  was  accustomed  to 
see  from  the  headlands,  and  some  of  the  others  were 
greater  birds — the  great  black-backed  gull,  as  big  a 
gull  as  there  is  in  the  world,  who  had  a  rock  to  him- 
self near  the  Land's  End,  where  four  or  five  couples 
could  be  seen  congregated  ;  and  the  shag,  the  cor- 
morant which  abounds  most  on  this  coast.  They  are 
heavy,  ungainly  flyers,  and  have  an  ugly  reptilian  look 
when  fishing  in  the  sea,  but  seen  standing  erect  and 
motionless,  airing  their  spread  wings,  they  have  a 
noble  decorative  appearance,  like  carved  bird-figures 
on  the  wet  black  jagged  rocks  amid  the  green  and 
white  tumultuous  sea.  There,  too,  was  the  ancient 
raven,  and  he  was  the  most  irreconcilable  of  all.  At 
one  spot  on  the  cliff  close  to  where  I  was  staying  a 
solitary  raven  invariably  turned  up  to  shadow  me. 
He  would  fly  up  and  down,  then  alight  on  a  rock  a 
hundred  yards  away  or  more  and  watch  me,  occa- 
sionally emitting  his  deep  hoarse  human-like  croak  ; 
but  it  failed  to  frighten  me  away  or  put  me  in  a 
passion,  as  I  was  not  a  native.  The  Cornishman  of 
the  coast,  when  he  hears  that  ominous  sound,  mocks 
the  bird  :  "  Corpse  !  corpse  !  you  devil  !  If  I  had  a 


CASTLES   BY   THE   SEA  69 

gun  I'd  give  you  corpse  !  "  It  is  not  strange  the 
raven  views  the  human  form  divine  with  suspicion  in 
these  parts  :  he  is  much  persecuted  by  the  religious 
people  hereabouts,  and  when  they  cannot  climb  up  or 
down  to  his  nest  on  a  ledge  of  the  cliff,  they  are 
sometimes  able  to  destroy  it  by  setting  fire  to  a  furze 
bush  and  dropping  it  upon  the  nest  from  above. 

The  rocky  forelands  I  haunted  were  many,  but  the 
favourite  one  was  Gurnard's   Head,  situated  about 


THE    LOGAN    ROCK 


midway  between  St.  Ives  and  Land's  End.  It  is  the 
grandest  and  one  of  the  most  marked  features  of  that 
bold  coast.  Seen  from  a  distance,  from  one  point  of 
view,  the  promontory  suggests  the  figure  of  a  Sphinx, 
the  entire  body  lying  out  from  the  cliff,  the  waves 
washing  over  its  huge  black  outstretched  paws  and 
beating  on  its  breast,  its  stupendous  deformed  face 
composed  of  piled  masses  of  granite  looking  out  on 
the  Atlantic.  I  was  often  there  afterwards,  spending 
long  hours  sitting  on  the  rocks  of  the  great  head  and 


yo  THE   LAND'S   END 

shoulders,  watching  the  sea  and  the  birds  that  live 
in  it ;  and  later,  when  April  set  the  tiny  bell  of  the 
rock  pipit  tinkling,  and  the  wheatear,  hovering  over 
the  crags,  dropped  his  brief  delicious  warble,  and  when 
the  early  delicate  flowers  touched  the  rocks  and  turf 
with  tender,  brilliant  colour,  I  was  more  enamoured 
than  ever  of  my  lonely  castle  by  the  sea.  Forced  to 
leave  it  I  could  but  chew  samphire  and  fill  my  pockets 
with  its  clustered  green  finger-like  leaves,  so  as  to 
have  the  wild  flavour  of  that  enchanting  place  as  long 
as  possible  in  my  mouth  and  its  perfume  about  me. 

Now  I  wish  only  to  relate  an  adventure  which 
befell  me  on  that  midwinter  day  on  the  occasion 
of  my  first  visit,  when  nothing  happened  and  I  saw 
nothing  particular  except  with  the  mind's  eye,  for 
this  was  an  adventure  of  the  spirit. 

It  was  one  of  those  perfect  days  when  the  sun 
shines  from  an  unclouded  sky  and  the  wind  that 
raves  without  ceasing  at  last  falls  asleep  and  the 
whole  world  sleeps  in  the  warm,  brilliant  light, 
albeit  with  eyes  wide  open  like  a  basking  snake.  I 
was  abroad  early,  and  after  wandering  over  a  good 
many  miles  of  moor  and  climbing  several  hills  I 
arrived  at  my  destination,  tired  and  very  hungry, 
and  the  first  thing  I  did  was  to  lunch  heartily  on 
bread  and  cheese  and  beer  at  the  inn  which  you  find 
at  a  short  distance  from  the  promontory.  Naturally 
after  my  meal  and  an  hour's  scramble  over  the  rough 
rocks  of  the  headland  1  felt  disposed  to  take  a  good 
rest  before  setting  out  on  my  return,  and  I  soon 
found  a  suitable  spot — a  slab  of  stone  lying  with  a 


GURNARD'S   HEAD 


To  face  page  70 


OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


CASTLES   BY   THE   SEA  71 

slope  to  the  sea  on  the  edge  of  the  crag.  It  was  like 
a  table-top  with  a  rich  cloth  of  grey  and  orange- 
coloured  lichen  covering  it,  and  was  very  warm  in 
the  sun,  and  to  make  it  more  comfortable  I  rolled 
up  my  waterproof  and  put  it  under  my  head,  so  that 
lying  there  at  full  length  I  could  still  look  at  the  sea 
and  the  gulls  and  gannets  passing  and  repassing 
before  me. 

In  a  very  few  minutes  I  began  to  grow  drowsy. 
So  much  the  better,  I  thought ;  for  never  is  sleep 
more  sweet  and  refreshing  to  a  tired  man  than  when 
it  comes  to  him  under  the  wide  sky  on  a  warm  day. 
The  sensation  of  being  overcome  is  itself  very  de- 
lightful, so  I  did  not  resist  but  welcomed  it,  albeit 
quite  conscious  that  it  was  there  in  me  and  would 
soon  have  me  in  its  power.  In  a  vague  way  I  even 
felt  interested  and  amused  at  the  process  :  I  could 
imagine  that  the  spirit  of  sleep  was  there  in  person, 
kneeling  on  the  rock  behind  my  head  and  making  her 
passes,  until  the  wide  sea  and  wide  sky  began  to  seem 
all  of  one  colour  and  the  figures  of  the  gulls  and 
gannets  to  grow  vaguer  as  they  passed  before  me. 
Presently  I  was  in  that  state  when  the  mind  ceases 
to  think,  when  the  place  of  thought  is  taken  by 
pictures  from  memory,  which  come,  as  it  were,  floating 
before  us  to  pass  away  and  be  succeeded  by  others 
and  still  others  without  any  connection.  They  are 
not  "suggestions  of  contiguity  "  nor  even  of  "anal- 
ogy "  :  they  are  not  suggestions  at  all,  and  come  we 
know  not  how  or  why. 

Now  among  these  visions  or  pictures  of  things  seen 


72  THE   LAND'S   END 

or  heard  or  read  of  there  was  one  described  in  a  poem 
called  "The  Hunter's  Vision,"  which  had  been  lying  for 
years  unknown  or  forgotten  in  some  dusty  lumber- 
room  of  the  brain.  I  read  it  first  in  my  early  years, 
and  though  it  was  poor  poetry  it  powerfully  affected 
me,  partly  because  I  was  a  hunter  myself  in  those 
days,  although  only  a  boy  hunter,  and  often  wandered 
far  into  lonely  places,  and  sometimes  when  faint  with 
heat  and  fatigue  I  rested  and  even  fell  asleep  in 
the  shadow  of  a  bush  or  of  my  own  horse.  The 
poem  relates  how  the  tired  hunter  at  noon  sat  down 
to  rest  on  abutting  crag  on  the  steep  mountain  side 
where  he  had  been  climbing,  and  how  when  gazing 
before  him  the  burning  heavens  and  vast  plains  of 
earth,  scorched  brown  by  the  summer  sun,  grew  misty 
and  dim  to  his  sight,  then  gradually  changed  to  a 
vision  of  his  early  home.  He  knew  it  well — the  old 
familiar  scene — and  those  who  were  assembled  there 
to  welcome  him  ;  how  could  he  but  know  them — his 
long  dead  and  long  lost ;  they  were  there  gazing  at 
him  and  some  were  coming  with  outstretched  arms 
towards  him,  their  faces  shining  with  joy.  The  very 
words  of  the  poem  came  back  to  me  with  the  picture : — 

Forward  with  fixed  and  eager  eyes 
The  hunter  leaned  in  act  to  rise. 

But  he  leaned  too  far  in  his  eagerness  and  slipped  from 
the  crag  and  woke,  if  he  ever  woke  at  all,  to  know  for 
one  brief,  bitter  moment  that  he  was  lost  for  ever. 

It  is  a  story  to  be  told,  whether  in  verse  or  prose, 
in  the  simplest,  directest  manner  ;  for  is  there  a  more 


CASTLES   BY   THE   SEA  73 

poignant  grief  than  that  of  the  lonely,  weary  man, 
especially  in  some  solitary  place,  who  remembers  his 
loneliness,  that  he  is  divided  by  death  and  change  and 
absence  from  his  own  kin  who  were  dearer  than  all 
the  world  to  him  ?  And  just  as  his  thought  is  the 
saddest,  so  the  dream  of  a  return  to  and  reunion  with 
the  lost  ones  is  assuredly  the  most  blissful  he  can  know. 

Now,  on  the  verge  of  sleep,  seeing  that  picture 
pass  before  me — the  ineffable  sadness  of  the  lonely 
hunter  in  the  wilderness,  the  vision,  the  unutterable 
joy,  and  the  fearful  end,  I  thought  (for  thought  now 
came  to  me)  of  my  own  case — my  loneliness,  for  I, 
too,  was  lonely,  not  because  I  was  there  by  myself  on 
that  promontory,  but  because  a  whole  ocean  and  the 
impassable  ocean  of  death  separated  me  from  my  own 
people.  Then  it  came  into  my  mind  that  I,  too,  fast 
falling  into  oblivion,  would  experience  that  blissful 
vision  ;  that  the  hoarse  sound  of  the  sea  far  below  on 
the  rocks  would  sink  and  change  to  the  sound  of  the 
summer  wind  in  the  old  poplars,  that  I  would  see  the 
old  roof  and  all  those  I  first  knew  and  loved  on  the 
earth— see  them  as  in  the  old  days  "returned  in 
beauty  from  the  dust,"  and  seeing  them  should  start 
forward  "  in  act  to  rise,"  and  so  end  my  wanderings 
by  falling  from  that  sloping,  perilous  rock  ! 

In  a  moment  I  became  wide  awake,  for  I  did  not 
wish  to  perish  by  accident  just  yet,  and,  jumping 
up,  I  stretched  out  my  arms,  stamped  with  my  feet, 
and  rubbed  my  eyes  vigorously  to  get  rid  of  my 
drowsiness  ;  then  sat  down  quietly  and  resumed  my 
watch  of  gulls  and  gannets. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE    BRITISH    PELICAN 

The  gannet — Gannets  at  St.  Ives — At  Treen  Dinas — Appearance  of 
the  bird  when  fishing — The  rise  before  the  fall — Gannet  and 
gull — A  contrast — Gull  and  Great  Northern  Diver — Gulls  and 
gannets  in  the  pilchard  season — Bass,  pollack  and  sand-eels — An 
extraordinary  accident. 

"TT\R1TISH  pelican"  may  seem  almost  too  grand 
J  a  name  for  a  bird  the  size  of  our  gannet,  or 
Solan  goose  ;  but  he  is  of  that  family,  and 
was  once,  in  the  Linnaean  classification,  of  the  very 
genus — a  Pelicanus.  Moreover,  in  this  land  of  small 
birds — thanks  to  the  barbarians  who  have  extirpated 
the  big  ones — the  Sula  bassana  is  very  large,  being 
little  inferior  to  the  goose,  though  he  is  certainly 
small  compared  with  his  magnificent  rose-coloured 
relation,  the  greatest  of  the  true  pelicans. 

Until  I  came  to  Cornwall  I  never  had  a  proper  op- 
portunity of  observing  this  noble  fowl  and  his  fishing 
methods  ;  here  he  is  common  all  round  the  coast, 
especially  in  the  winter  months,  and  when,  as  fre- 

74 


THE   BRITISH    PELICAN  75 

quently  happens,  he  fishes  close  to  the  land,  he  may 
be  watched  very  comfortably  by  the  hour  from  a  seat 
on  some  high  foreland.  A  rock  two  or  three  hundred 
feet  above  the  sea  is  the  very  best  position  for  the 
spectator  ;  the  birds  float  to  and  fro  almost  on  a  level 
with  his  eyes,  and  their  beautiful  motions  can  be  better 
seen  than  from  a  boat  or  ship. 

Standing  on  the  yellow  sands  in  the  little  cove 
behind  St.  Ives  I  watched  the  tide  coming  in  one 
rough  cloudy  evening,  the  sea  as  it  advanced  rising 
into  big  glassy  billows  of  a  clear  glaucous  green 
colour  before  bursting  in  foam  and  spray  running  far 
and  wide  over  the  pale  smooth  sandy  floor.  Close 
behind  the  advancing  waves  a  number  of  birds  were 
flying  to  and  fro,  mostly  herring  gulls,  but  there  were 
also  a  good  many  gannets.  These  moved  up  and 
down  in  a  series  of  wide  curves  at  a  rate  of  speed 
which  never  varied,  with  two  or  three  or  four  beats 
of  the  powerful,  pointed,  black-tipped  white  wings, 
followed  by  a  long  interval  of  gliding ;  the  bird 
always  keeping  at  a  height  of  about  twenty-five  feet 
above  the  surface,  and,  without  an  instant's  pause  or 
hesitation,  dashing  obliquely  into  the  sea  after  its 
prey. 

That  is  how  they  fish  sometimes,  flying  low  and 
seeing  the  fishes  a  good  distance  ahead,  and  is  but  one 
of  several  methods.  When  next  I  was  watching  them 
their  manner  was  very  different.  The  air  was  calm 
and  clear  and  full  of  bright  sunlight,  and  I  watched 
them  from  the  stupendous  mass  of  rock  forming  the 
headland  on  which  stands  the  famous  Logan  Rock. 


76  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  birds  were  in  considerable  numbers,  sweeping 
round  in  great  curves  and  circles  at  a  uniform  height 
of  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  from  the  surface. 
They  were  distributed  over  an  immense  area  ;  rang- 
ing, in  fact,  over  the  entire  visible  sea,  from  those  that 
fished  within  a  couple  cf  hundred  yards  off  the  rocks 
on  which  I  sat,  to  the  furthest  away,  which  appeared 
as  moving  white  specks  on  the  horizon.  When  fish- 
ing from  that  height  the  gannet  drops  straight  down 
on  its  prey,  striking  the  sea  with  such  force  as  to  send 
up  a  column  of  water  eight  or  ten  feet  high,  the  bird 
disappearing  from  sight  for  a  space  of  five  or  six 
seconds,  or  longer,  then  rising  and  after  floating  a  few 
moments  on  the  surface  rising  laboriously  to  resume 
its  flight  as  before. 

The  fall  of  the  big  white  bird  from  such  a  height 
is  a  magnificent  spectacle,  and  causes  the  spectator  to 
hold  his  breath  as  he  watches  it  with  closed  wings 
hurl  itself  down  as  if  to  certain  perdition.  The  tre- 
mendous shock  of  the  blow  on  the  sea  would  certainly 
kill  the  bird  but  for  the  wad  of  dense  elastic  plumage 
which  covers  and  protects  it.  For  it  hits  itself  as 
hard  as  it  hits  the  sea,  and  how  hard  that  is  we  may 
know  when  we  watch  the  gannet  drop  perpendicularly 
like  a  big  white  stone,  and  when  at  a  distance  of  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  we  can  see  the  column  of  water 
thrown  up  and  distinctly  hear  the  loud  splash.  Yet 
no  sooner  has  it  hurled  itself  into  the  sea  than  it  is 
out  again  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  ready  for 
another  fall  and  blow  ! 

One  wonders  how,  when  the  gannet  is  flying  high, 


THE   BRITISH   PELICAN  77 

on  catching  sight  of  a  fish  directly  beneath  him  in  the 
water,  he  is  able  instantly  to  check  his  course,  get 
into  position  and  fall  just  at  the  right  spot.  One 
would  suppose  that  he  could  not  do  it,  that  the  im- 
petus of  so  heavy  a  body  moving  swiftly  through  the 
air  would  carry  him  many  yards  beyond  the  spot,  and 
that  he  would  have  to  return  and  search  again. 
He  does  not,  in  fact,  bring  himself  to  a  sudden  stop 
as  the  small  light  kestrel  is  able  to  do,  nor  does  he,  I 
think,  keep  the  fish  all  the  time  in  his  eye,  but  he  is 
nevertheless  able  to  accomplish  his  purpose,  and  in 
this  way  :  The  instant  a  fish  is  detected  the  bird 
shoots  up  a  distance  of  a  dozen  to  twenty  feet ;  thus 
the  swift  motion  is  not  arrested,  but  its  direction 
changed  from  horizontal  to  vertical,  and  this  is  prob- 
ably brought  about  by  a  lightning-quick  change  in  the 
set  of  the  wing  feathers  ;  but  it  is  a  change  which  the 
eye  cannot  detect,  even  with  the  aid  of  the  most 
powerful  binocular.  The  upward  movement  is  not 
exactly  vertical ;  it  describes  a  slight  curve,  and,  at 
the  top,  when  the  impetus  which  carried  him  up  has 
spent  itself,  the  bird  wheels  round,  turning  half  over 
and  bringing  his  head  down,  pointing  to  the  sea.  I 
suppose  that  he  then  quickly  recovers  the  fish  he  had 
lost  sight  of  for  a  moment,  for  with  a  pause  of  scarcely 
a  second  he  then  closes  his  wings  and  lets  himself  fall. 
On  this  calm,  bright  day,  with  scores  of  birds  in 
sight,  I  was  well  able  to  observe  this  beautiful  aerial 
manoeuvre — a  sort  of  looping  the  loop,  and  seemingly 
an  almost  impossible  feat  which  they  yet  accomplish 
with  such  apparent  ease. 


78  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  spectacle  of  many  gannets  fishing,  all  moving 
in  a  perpetual  series  of  curves,  wavering  lines  and 
half  circles,  at  exactly  the  same  altitude,  and  all  per- 
forming the  same  set  of  actions  on  spying  a  fish, 
produces  the  idea  that  they  are  automata  moved  by 
extraneous  forces,  and  are  incapable  of  varying  their 
mode  of  action.  As  a  fact,  they  vary  it  constantly 
according  to  the  state  of  the  atmosphere  and  the  sea, 
and  probably  also  the  depth  at  which  the  fish  are 
swimming.  But  whatever  the  method  for  the  day 
may  be,  one  is  impressed  and  amazed  at  the  marvellous 
energy  of  the  bird,  and  this  strikes  us  most  when  we 
see  gannets  and  gulls  together. 

The  gull  is  a  waiter  on  the  tide,  and  on  wind  and 
rain  and  sunshine  and  any  change  which  may  bring 
him  something  to  eat — a  sort  of  feathered  Mr. 
Micawber  among  sea-birds.  His  indolent  happy- 
go-lucky  way  of  making  a  living  reminds  you 
of  his  friend  the  fisherman  who,  when  not  fish- 
ing, can  do  nothing  but  lounge  on  the  quay  with 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  or  stand  leaning  against 
a  sunny  wall  revolving  the  quid  in  his  mouth  and 
making  an  occasional  remark  to  the  idler  nearest  to 
him.  His  brief  and  furious  fits  of  activity  are 
followed  by  long  intervals  of  repose,  when  he  floats 
at  the  will  of  wind  and  wave  on  the  sea  or  sits 
dozing  on  a  rock.  He  also  spends  a  good  deal  of 
his  time  in  a  kind  of  loitering,  probably  waiting  for 
something  to  turn  up,  when  he  is  seen  in  a  loose 
company  scattered  far  and  wide  about  the  sea,  one 
here,  two  or  three  a  little  distance  off,  and  a  few  more 


THE   BRITISH   PELICAN  79 

a  hundred  yards  away ;  others  flying  about  in  an  aim- 
less way,  dropping  down  at  intervals  as  if  to  exchange 
remarks  with  those  on  the  water,  then  wandering  off 
again. 

One  day  sitting  on  a  rock  at  Gurnard's  Head,  I 
watched  a  company  of  forty  or  fifty  gannets  fishing 
in  a  calm  sea  where  a  great  many  herring  and  lesser 
black-backed  gulls  were  scattered  about  idly  rocking 
on  the  surface  in  their  usual  way.  The  gannets  were 
sweeping  round  at  a  height  of  about  a  hundred  feet, 
and  were  finding  fish  in  plenty  as  their  falls  into  the 
sea  were  pretty  frequent.  The  gulls  saw  nothing,  or 
knew  that  the  fishes  were  not  for  them,  and  they  were 
consequently  not  in  the  least  excited.  By  and  by 
I  saw  a  gannet  drop  upon  the  sea  just  where  two 
gulls  were  floating,  sending  a  cloud  of  spray  over 
one  bird  and  causing  both  to  rock  and  toss  about  like 
little  white  boats  in  a  whirlpool.  I  could  imagine 
one  of  those  gulls  gasping  with  astonishment  and 
remarking  to  his  fellow  :  "  That  was  a  nice  thing, 
wasn't  it !  Coming  down  on  me  like  that  without  a 
by-your-leave  !  I  suppose  if  the  fish  had  been  swim- 
ming right  under  me  he  would  have  run  me  through 
with  his  confounded  beak  ;  and  when  he  had  shaken 
me  off  and  seen  me  floating  dead  on  the  water,  he 
would  have  said  that  it  served  me  jolly  well  right  for 
getting  in  his  way  !  Certainly  these  gannets  are  the 
greatest  brutes  out — but  what  fishers  ! — and  what 
splendid  fellows  !  " 

Gulls  are  all  robbers  by  instinct  but  have  not  the 
power  and  courage  of  the  predaceous  Bonxie  or  Great 


8o  THE   LAND'S   END 

Skua  of  the  Shetlands,  a  pirate   by  profession  who 
lives  mainly  on  the  labours  of  others.    The  gull  must 
fend  for  himself  and  levy  tribute  when  he  gets  the 
chance,  when  he  can  intimidate  some  other  bird  or 
snatch  a  morsel  from  h;s  beak.     From  the  gannet  he 
gets  nothing  ;  it  would  be  dangerous  for  him  to  come 
in  that  bird's  way,  and  no  sooner  is  the  fish  caught 
than   it    is  swallowed.     The  gannet   takes   no   more 
notice  of  the  gull  than  of  a  bubble  floating  on  the 
surface,  and  probably  does  not  even  know  that  the 
negligible  bird  regards  his  fishing  operations  with  a 
good  deal  of  interest  and  hungrily  wishes  he  could 
have  a  share  in  the  spoil.     But  how  far  gulls  will  go 
in  their  desire  to  get  something  for  nothing  may  be 
seen  in  the  following  incident  which  was  witnessed  by 
some  fishermen  at  Sennen  Cove,  close  to  the  Land's 
End.    A  Great  Northern  Diver  made  its  appearance  at 
the  cove  and  spent  a  part  of  the  winter  there,  and  as 
he  was  not  disturbed  and  grew  accustomed   to  the 
sight  of  human  beings  he  lost  all  shyness  and  often 
fished  close  to  the  rocks  where  the  men  stood  watch- 
ing him.     One  day  they  saw  him  with  a  small  flat 
fish  which  he  could  not  swallow  ;  it  was  too  broad  to 
go  down  his  gullet,  but  he  would  not  let  it  escape 
and  continued  to  toss  it  up  and  catch  it  again,  as  if 
determined    to  get   it  down   somehow.     Or  it   may 
have  been  that  he  was  only  playing  with  it  just  as  a 
cat  when  not  hungry  plays  with  a  mouse.     By  and  by 
a  black-backed  gull  swam  to  him  and  began  following 
him  and  making  snatches  at  the  flounder  each  time 
the  diver  tossed  it  up.     But  the  diver  would  not  let 


THE   BRITISH   PELICAN  81 

him  have  the  fish,  he  simply  turned  round  to  get 
away  from  the  teasing  gull,  and  the  quiet  way  in 
which  he  took  it  only  emboldened  the  other  until 
he  became  quite  excited  and  was  almost  violent  in 
his  efforts  to  get  the  fish.  Then  suddenly  the  diver, 
dropping  the  fish,  turned  on  him  and  struck  him  like 
lightning,  driving  his  sharp  powerful  beak  into  his 
neck  or  the  base  of  the  skull.  The  gull  flapped  his 
wings  violently  once  or  twice,  then  turned  over  and 
floated  away,  belly  up,  quite  dead.  Instantly  after 
dealing  the  blow,  the  diver  went  down  and  quickly 
reappeared  with  the  flounder,  and  resumed  tossing 
and  catching  it  again,  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened, 
while  the  dead  gull  slowly  drifted  further  and  further 
away. 

What  struck  the  men  who  witnessed  the  tragic 
incident  as  most  remarkable  was  the  sudden  change 
in  the  temper  of  the  diver,  when  he  turned  at  last  on 
the  other,  dealt  him  the  swift  killing  blow,  then 
immediately  returned  to  his  play  with  the  fish  as  if 
the  slaying  of  that  big  formidable  bird  had  affected 
him  no  more  than  it  would  have  done  to  shake  off  a 
drop  of  water.  My  thought  on  hearing  about  it  was 
that  the  act  of  the  diver  was  wonderfully  like  that  of 
many  a  human  being  to  whom  killing  is  no  murder, 
who  kills  in  a  casual  way  because  of  some  religious  or 
ethical  pr  political  idea,  or  merely  because  he  has  been 
annoyed  or  stung  into  a  fit  of  anger,  and  who,  the 
killing  done,  recovers  his  normal  placid  temper  and 
thinks  no  more  about  it. 

An   exceedingly   painful    incident  of  this  kind    is 


82  THE   LAND'S   END 

related  by  Darwin  in  describing  the  natives  of 
Tierra  del  Fuego  in  his  Voyage  of  a  Naturalist.  An- 
other very  pathetic  case  is  related  by  Browning,  in 
the  Dramatic  Idylls^  in  which  the  woodcutter  in  a 
Russian  village  who  is  able  to  handle  his  axe  so  deftly 
strikes  off  the  head  of  a  young  woman  who  has  just 
escaped  from  the  wolves  that  pursued  her  in  the  forest. 
They  sprang  upon  her  in  her  sleigh  and  dragged  her 
child  from  her  arms  ;  the  pious  woodcutter  thought 
she  should  have  allowed  herself  to  be  torn  to  pieces 
before  releasing  the  child.  Then,  after  striking 
her  head  off  he  goes  to  his  cottage,  puts  down  the 
axe,  and  plays  with  his  children  on  the  floor  and  is 
greatly  surprised  that  any  fuss  should  be  made  by 
his  fellow-villagers  at  what  he  had  done. 

The  gulls  have  a  particularly  uncomfortable  time 
when,  as  occasionally  happens  during  the  pilchard 
fishing,  a  number  of  gannets  appear  to  claim  their 
share  in  the  spoil.  No  sooner  has  the  circle  of  the 
seine  been  completed,  forming  a  pool  teeming  with 
fish  in  the  sea  as  it  were,  than  the  gulls  are  there  in  a 
dense  crowd.  Then  if  the  gannets  appear  hovering 
over  them  and  hurling  themselves  down  like  rocks 
into  the  seine  the  gulls  scatter  in  consternation  and 
have  to  wait  their  turn.  The  wonder  is  that  the 
gannets  diving  with  such  violence,  bird  following  bird 
so  closely,  all  in  so  small  an  area,  do  not  collide  and 
kill  each  other.  Somehow  as  by  a  miracle  they  escape 
accidents,  and  when  they  have  gorged  until  they  can 
gorge  no  more  they  retire  to  digest  their  meal  at  sea, 
and  immediately  the  gulls  return  to  feast  with  a  tre- 


THE   BRITISH   PELICAN  83 

nrendous  noise  and  much  squabbling,  each  bird 
fighting  to  deprive  his  neighbour  of  the  fish  he 
picks  up.  This  lasts  until  the  gannets,  having 
quickly  digested  their  first  meal  or  got  rid  of  it 
by  drinking  sea-water,  return  with  a  fresh  appetite 
for  a  second  one,  and  the  poor  gulls  are  once  more 
compelled  to  leave  that  delectable  spot,  teeming  and 
glittering  with  myriads  of  rushing,  leaping,  terrified 
pilchards. 

At  other  times,  when  fishing-birds  are  attracted  to 
one  spot  by  shoals  of  mackerel,  herring,  sprats  or 
pilchards,  gulls  and  gannets  feast  together  very  com- 
fortably, and  as  the  gulls  take  good  care  not  to  get  in 
the  way  of  their  too  energetic  neighbours  there  are 
probably  no  accidents.  Occasionally  at  such  times 
they  have  an  opportunity  of  feeding  on  the  launce  or 
sand-eel,  a  favourite  food  of  all  the  rapacious  crea- 
tures, fish  and  fowl,  that  get  their  living  in  the  sea. 
The  launce  is  a  long  slender  eel-like  silvery  fish  that 
has  the  curious  habit  of  burying  itself  in  the  sand, 
and  it  is  said  that  when  out  feeding  if  pursued  it  in- 
stinctively darts  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea  to 
escape  by  burying  itself  in  the  sand.  Bass  and  pol- 
lack are  the  greatest  persecutors  of  the  launce,  and 
when  a  number  of  these  greedy  fishes  come  upon  a 
shoal  of  sand-eels  in  deep  water  they  get  beneath 
them  to  hold  them  up,  and  surround  them  as  well  to 
prevent  their  escape.  Day,  in  his  British  Fishes,  states 
that  pollack  have  been  observed  acting  in  this  way  on 
the  coast  of  Norway  ;  but  many  Cornish  fishermen 
have  witnessed  it  too,  though  it  has  not  been  de- 


84  THE   LAND'S   END 

scribed  by  Jonathan  Couch  and  other  writers  on  the 
habits  of  the  native  fishes  as  occurring  in  our  waters. 
A  native  of  Hayle,  a  boatman  and  a  keen  observer  of 
bird  and  fish  life,  gave  me  the  following  account  of  a 
scene  he  witnessed  in  St.  Ives  Bay,  not  far  from  the 
Godrevy  Lighthouse.  His  attention  was  attracted  by 
a  great  concourse  of  gulls  and  gannets,  and  rowing 
to  the  spot  he  found  the  surface  of  the  sea  boiling 
with  an  immense  shoal  of  sand-eels  rushing  about  on 
the  surface  and  leaping  clean  out  of  the  water  in  their 
efforts  to  escape  from  their  pursuers.  It  was  a  very 
unusual  sight,  as  the  shoals  of  sand-eels  are  usually 
small,  but  here  they  swarmed  at  the  surface  over  a 
very  large  area — probably  six  or  seven  acres.  It  was 
a  fine  bright  day  and  the  water  being  marvellously 
clear  he  could  see  the  pollack  ranging  swiftly  about  at 
a  considerable  depth  and  rising  at  intervals  to  the 
surface  to  capture  their  prey.  Meanwhile  the  birds 
in  hundreds  were  hovering  overhead,  the  gannets 
coming  down  in  their  usual  way  like  huge  stones 
hurled  into  the  sea,  the  gulls  swooping  lightly  and 
snatching  their  prey  and  rising  with  the  long  silvery 
wriggling  fishes  in  their  beaks. 

Every  gull  thus  rising  with  a  launce  in  its  beak  was 
of  course  instantly  pursued  and  set  upon  by  all  the 
others  flying  near  and  had  to  fight  furiously  to  retain 
his  capture. 

That  is  invariably  the  gull's  way  :  even  when  fish 
are  swarming  on  the  surface  and  easily  taken  they 
must  give  vent  to  their  predatory  instincts  and  waste 
time  and  energy  in  robbing  one  another  and  in  squab- 


THE   BRITISH    PELICAN  85 

bling  and  screaming,  instead  of  every  bird  trying  to 
catch  as  many  as  he  can  for  himself.  It  is  very  differ- 
ent with  the  gannet  ;  he  never  in  all  his  life — and  it 
may  be  a  life  of  a  century  or  longer  for  all  we  know 
to  the  contrary — wastes  as  much  energy  as  would  be 
the  equivalent  of  a  single  feather's  weight  in  trying 
to  take  a  morsel  out  of  the  beak  of  another  gannet 
or  bird  of  any  kind.  One  might  say  that  his  faculties 
are  so  perfect,  his  power  so  great,  that  he  has  no  need 
to  descend  to  such  courses.  Indeed,  so  admirably  is 
he  fitted  for  his  sea  life,  that  when  we  view  him  in 
very  bad  weather,  when  he  is  travelling,  following  the 
coastline,  in  an  everlasting  succession  of  beautiful 
curves  and  wave-like  risings  and  fallings  ;  and  when 
he  is  fishing,  even  when  the  sky  is  black  with  tem- 
pests and  the  tumbling  ocean  is  all  grey  and  white 
with  whirling  spindrift  ;  when  the  furious  wind  has 
blown  the  whole  tribe  of  gulls  inland  many  a  league, 
he  appears  to  us  as  a  part  of  it  all — of  wave  and 
spray  and  wind  and  cloud — a  fragment,  one  of  a 
million,  torn  away  by  the  blast,  into  which  a  guiding 
spirit  or  intelligent  principle  or  particle  has  been 
blown  to  make  it  cohere  and  give  it  form  and  weight 
and  indestructibility. 

I  can  but  express  it  in  my  blundering  fashion,  but 
the  thought  has  been  in  my  mind  when,  sitting  on 
a  rock  on  some  high  foreland,  I  have  watched  the 
gannets  passing  by  the  hour,  travelling  to  some  dis- 
tant feeding  area  or  to  their  breeding  haunts  in  the 
far  north  ;  a  procession  many  a  league  long,  but 
a  very  thin  procession  of  twos  and  twos,  every  bird 


86  THE   LAND'S   END 

with  his  mate,  following  the  trend  of  the  coast,  each 
bird  in  turn  now  above  the  sea,  now  down  in  the 
shelter  of  a  big  incoming  wave,  and  every  curve  and 
every  rise  and  fall  of  one  so  exactly  repeated  by  the 
other  as  to  give  the  idea  of  a  bird  and  its  shadow  or 
reflection,  with  bird  and  reflection  continually  chang- 
ing places. 

After  seeing  the  gannet  every  day  for  months  one 
would  be  apt  to  think  that  this  species  is  incapable  of 
making  a  mistake  and  is  beyond  reach  of  accidents, 
but  that  cannot  be  supposed  of  any  living  creature, 
however    perfect    the    correspondence    may    appear 
between  it  and  the  environment.     At  Sennen  I  heard 
of  an  extraordinary  mishap  which  befell  and  caused 
the  destruction  of  a  large   number  of  gannets.     It 
was  told  to  me  by  several  of  the  fishermen  who  wit- 
nessed it  at  Sennen  Cove,  at  the  Land's  End,  and  by 
a  gentleman  of  the  place,  who  is  a  keen  ornithologist 
and  was   present  at  the  time.     A  strong  wind  was 
blowing  straight  into  the  bay,  and  there  was  a  very 
big  sea  on.     The  sea,  they  told  me,  presented  a  sin- 
gular appearance  on  account  of  the  enormous  waves 
rolling  in  ;  the  village  people,  in  fact,  were  all  out 
watching  it.     A  large  number  of  gannets  were  busy 
fishing  and  were  coming  further  and  further  in,  fol- 
lowing   the    shoal.     Then    a  wonderful    thing    hap- 
pened on  this  day  of  wonders  ;  the  wind  which  had 
been  blowing  a  gale  fell  quite  suddenly  and  was  suc- 
ceeded   in    a    very    few  minutes  by  a  perfect  calm. 
Some  of  the  men  assured  me  they  had  never  known 
such  a  thing  happen  before.     I  have  known  it  once, 


THE   BRITISH    PELICAN  87 

and  that  was  in  South  America,  when  a  violent  south- 
west wind  which  had  been  blowing  for  many  hours 
dropped  suddenly,  and  the  air  was  a  dead  calm  before 
the  loud  noise  of  the  gale  in  the  trees  was  out  of  my 
ears.  The  change  was  disastrous  to  the  gannets  ;  in 
that  windless  atmosphere  in  the  sheltered  bay  and 
with  the  sea  in  that  state  they  could  not  rise.  They 
were  seen  struggling  on  the  water  and  carried  shore- 
wards  by  the  huge  incoming  waves  ;  but  their  fellows 
flying  to  and  fro  above  them,  intent  on  their  prey, 
did  not  see  or  heed  their  distress  ;  they  continued 
dashing  down  into  the  sea,  bird  after  bird,  and  every 
one  that  hurled  itself  down  remained  down,  until 
they  were  all  in  the  sea,  all  vainly  flapping  and 
struggling  to  keep  out  and  still  being  carried  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  shore.  Then  the  waves  began  to 
fling  them  out  on  the  flat  sandy  beach,  and  as  wave 
followed  wave,  bringing  more  and  more  of  the  birds, 
the  men  and  boys  who  were  watching  went  mad  with 
excitement  and  set  off  at  a  run,  every  one  as  he  went 
snatching  up  a  stick  or  an  iron  bar  or  whatever  would 
serve  as  a  weapon.  There  was  no  escape  for  the 
birds,  for  their  wings  could  not  lift  them,  and  they 
were  slaughtered  without  mercy,  even  as  shipwrecked 
men  on  this  dreadful  coast  in  the  ancient  days  had 
been  slaughtered,  and  the  sands  were  covered  with 
their  carcasses.  The  ancient  wreckers  got  something 
from  the  unhappy  wretches  they  slew,  but  these 
people  got  nothing  from  the  gannets.  1  asked  them 
why  they  slew  the  birds,  and  they  could  only  shrug 
their  shoulders  or  answer  that  they  had  the  birds  cast 


88  THE   LAND'S   END 

out  by  the  sea  at  their  mercy — what  was  there  to  do 
but  to  kill  them  ?  And  it  was  added  that  after  all, 
being  dead,  they  did  serve  some  good  purpose,  for 
by  and  by  a  farmer  came  and  carried  them  away  by 
cartloads  to  manure  his  land. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
BIRD    LIFE    IN   WINTER 

Land  birds — Gulls  in  bad  weather — Jackdaw  and  donkeys — Birds  in 
the  field — Yellowhammers — A  miracle  of  the  sun — The  common 
sparrow — An  old  disused  tin-mine — Sparrows  roosting  in  a  pit — 
Magpies'  language — Goldcrests  in  the  furze  bushes — The  Cornish 
wren — The  sad  little  Meadow  Pipit. 

A  GOOD  deal  of  space  has  already  been  given 
to  the  sea-birds  of  this  coast,  but  the  land- 
birds  deserve  a  chapter  too.  I  do  not  wish, 
however,  to  give  an  account  or  a  list  of  all  of  them, 
but  would  rather  follow  Carew's  example,  and  note 
only  "  such  as  minister  some  particular  cause  of  re- 
membrance." The  reader  who  would  have  more  than 
this  must  seek  for  it  in  one  of  those  "  hasty  schedules 
or  inventories  of  God's  property  made  by  some 
clerk " — the  local  ornithologies  and  lists  of  species 
in  the  Victorian  and  other  histories  and  various  other 
works.  On  this  exposed,  wind-beaten,  treeless  coast 
country  one  does  not  expect  to  find  an  abundant  or 

89 


90  THE   LAND'S   END 

varied  bird  life  ;  nevertheless  in  this  unpromising 
place  and  in  winter  I  had  altogether  a  very  pleasant 
time  with  the  feathered  people. 

When  the  weather  was  too  bad  for  the  cliffs  the 
gulls  were  driven  inland.  Gannets  and  cormorants 
could  endure  it ;  the  sea  was  their  true  home  and 
abiding-place  and  they  were  not  to  be  torn  from  it ; 
but  the  vagrant,  unsettled  and  somewhat  unballasted 
gulls  would  not  or  could  not  stay,  and  were  like  froth 
of  the  breakers  which  is  caught  up  and  whirled 
inland  by  the  blast.  On  such  days  (and  they  were 
many)  the  gulls  were  all  over  the  land,  wandering 
about  in  their  usual  aimless  manner,  or  in  flocks  seen 
resting  on  the  grass  in  the  shelter  of  a  stone  wall,  or 
mixing  loosely  with  companies  of  daws,  rooks,  peewits 
and  other  skilful  worm  and  grub  hunters,  waiting  idly 
for  the  chance  of  snatching  a  morsel  from  a  neigh- 
bour's beak. 

I  was  a  little  like  the  gulls  in  my  habits  :  on  fine 
days  the  cliffs  and  cliff  castles  were  my  favourite 
haunts  ;  in  very  rough  weather  my  rambles  were 
mostly  away  from  the  sea,  where  1  had  my  old  com- 
panions of  the  sea  wall,  the  gulls  and  daws,  still  with 
me.  So  much  has  already  been  said  of  this  last 
species  in  former  chapters  that  I  might  appear  to  be 
giving  him  too  great  prominence  to  bring  him  in 
again.  Yet  I  must  do  so  just  to  relate  a  little  scene  I 
witnessed  in  which  this  bird  had  a  principal  part,  the 
other  characters  being  donkeys. 

The  donkey  is  almost  the  only  domestic  creature  one 
meets  with  out  on  the  rough  high  moor  and  among 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  91 

the  stony  hills.  Cows  and  horses  are  occasionally 
seen,  but  they  do  not  strike  one  as  native  to  the  place 
as  the  donkey  does.  He  is  a  sort  of  link  between  the 
homestead  and  the  wilderness.  The  donkey  is  man's 
poor,  patient,  anciently-broken  creature,  but  when  he 
roams  abroad  in  quest  of  that  tough  and  juiceless 
fodder  on  the  desolate  heath  and  hillsides — a  food 
thought  good  enough  for  the  likes  of  him,  or  the  likes 
of  he,  as  his  master  would  say — he  fits  into  the  scene 
as  the  cow  and  horse  certainly  do  not.  He  is  not  so 
big,  and  his  rough,  dirty  or  dusty  coat  of  dull  indeter- 
minate greys  and  earthy  and  heather-like  browns  makes 
him  harmonise  with  his  surroundings.  His  long- 
drawn  reiterated  droning  and  whistling  cry  strikes  one, 
too,  as  a  voice  of  the  wild  incult  places.  On  this 
account  I  have  a  very  friendly  feeling  for  him,  and 
was  always  pleased  at  meeting  with  donkeys  in  my 
solitary  walks,  which  was  often  enough,  as  most  per- 
sons keep  one  or  more  in  these  parts.  He  is  a  good 
servant,  and  costs  nothing  to  keep.  Frequently  I  turn 
aside  to  speak  to  them,  and  as  a  rule  they  turn  their 
backs  or  hinder  parts  on  me,  as  much  as  to  say  that 
they  have  enough  of  human  beings  in  the  village  : 
here  they  prefer  to  be  left  alone.  But  when  I  produce 
an  apple  from  my  pocket  they  at  once  think  better  of 
it,  and  gather  round  me  very  much  interested  in  the 
apple,  and  quite  willing  for  the  sake  of  the  apple  to  let 
me  rub  their  noses  and  pull  their  ears. 

One  day,  walking  softly  through  a  thicket  of  very 
high  furze  bushes,  I  came  to  a  small  green  open  space 
in  which  were  three  donkeys,  one  lying  stretched  out 


92  THE   LAND'S   END 

full  length  on  the  bed  of  moss  with  a  jackdaw  sitting 
on  his  ribs  busily  searching  for  ticks  or  parasites  of 
some  kind  and  picking  them  from  his  skin.  The 
other  two  donkeys  were  standing  by,  gazing  at  the 
busy  bird  and  probably  envying  their  comrade  his 
good  luck.  My  sudden  appearance  at  a  distance  of 
two  or  three  yards  greatly  alarmed  them.  Away 
flew  the  daw,  and  up  jumped  the  recumbent  donkey, 
and  then  all  three  stared  at  me,  not  at  all  pleased  at 
the  intrusion. 

It  seemed  to  me  on  this  occasion  that  in  the  daw, 
the  friend  and  helper  of  our  poor  slave  the  donkey, 
the  bird  that  in  its  corvine  intelligence  and  cunning 
approaches  nearest  to  ourselves  among  the  avians,  we 
have  yet  another  link  uniting  man  to  his  wild  fellow- 
creatures. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  rough  weather  but  little 
frost  in  this  district ;  behind  the  cliffs,  sheltered  by 
stone  hedges  and  thickets  of  furze,  the  green  field  is 
the  chief  feeding-ground  of  the  birds  ;  there  with  the 
rooks  and  daws  and  gulls  and  peewits  you  find  field- 
fares—  the  bluebird  of  the  natives  —  and  missel- 
thrushes  in  flocks,  and  the  greybird,  as  the  song- 
thrush  is  called,  the  blackbird  and  small  troops  of 
wintering  larks.  Most  abundant  is  the  starling,  a 
winter  visitor  too,  for  he  does  not  breed  in  this  part 
of  Cornwall.  You  will  find  a  flock  in  every  little 
field,  and  the  sight  of  your  head  above  the  stone  wall 
sends  them  off  with  a  rush,  emitting  the  low  guttural 
alarm  note  which  sounds  like  running  water. 

The  yellowhammer  is  a  common  resident  species 


DONKEYS  ON   THE   MOOR 


To  face  page  92 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  93 

here.  We  usually  think  him  an  uninteresting  bird 
on  account  of  his  phlegmatic  disposition  and  monoton- 
ous song,  but  in  this  district,  in  winter,  I  found  him 
curiously  attractive,  and  among  the  modestly-coloured 
birds  that  were  his  neighbours  he  was  certainly  the 
most  splendid.  That  may  appear  a  word  better  suited 
to  the  golden  oriole,  but  I  am  thinking  of  one  of  his 
aspects,  as  I  frequently  saw  him,  and  of  a  miracle  of 
the  sun.  Here,  in  winter,  he  congregates  in  small 
companies  or  flocks  at  the  farms,  and  at  one  small 
farm  where  there  was  a  rather  better  shelter  than  at 
most  of  the  others,  owing  to  the  way  the  houses  and 
outhouses  and  ricks  were  grouped  together,  the  com- 
pany of  wintering  yellowhammers  numbered  about 
eighty  or  ninety.  Every  evening,  when  there  was 
any  sun,  these  birds  would  gather  on  some  spot — a 
rick  or  barn  roof  or  on  the  dark  green  bushes — 
sheltered  from  the  sea  wind,  where  they  could  catch 
the  last  rays.  Sitting  motionless  grouped  together  in 
such  numbers  they  made  a  strangely  pretty  picture. 

One  evening,  at  another  farm-house,  I  was  standing 
out  of  doors  talking  with  the  farmer,  when  the  sun 
came  out  beneath  a  bank  of  dark  cloud  and  shone 
level  on  the  slate  roof  of  a  cow-house  near  us.  It  was 
an  old  roof  on  which  the  oxidised  slate  had  taken  a 
soft  blue-grey  or  dove  colour — the  one  beautiful 
colour  ever  seen  in  weathered  slate  ;  and  no  sooner 
had  the  light  fallen  on  it  than  a  number  of  yellow- 
hammers  flew  from  some  other  point  where  they  had 
been  sitting  and  dropped  down  upon  this  roof.  They 
were  scattered  over  the  slates,  and,  sitting  motionless 


94  THE   LAND'S   END 

with  heads  drawn  in  and  plumage  bunched  out,  they 
were  like  golden  images  of  birds,  as  if  the  sun  had 
poured  a  golden-coloured  light  into  their  loose 
feathers  to  make  them  shine. 

The  grey  wagtail  and  the  goldfinch,  in  small 
numbers,  both  beautiful  birds,  were  wintering  here, 
but  they  could  not  compare  with  those  transfigured 
yellowhammers  I  had  seen. 

As  for  the  vulgar  sparrow,  nothing — not  even  the 
miracle-working  sun — could  make  him  brilliant  or 
beautiful  to  look  at,  and  I  have  indeed  acquired  the 
habit  of  not  looking  and  not  seeing  the  undesired 
thing.  That  is,  in  the  country  :  in  London  it  is 
different ;  there  I  can  be  thankful  for  the  sparrow 
where  he  does  us  (and  the  better  birds)  no  harm  and 
lives  very  comfortably  on  the  crumbs  that  fall  from 
our  tables.  Yet  now,  at  one  spot  on  this  coast,  I  was 
surprised  into  paying  particular  attention  to  the  spar- 
rows on  account  of  a  winter  custom  they  had 
acquired. 

One  day  on  very  rough  land,  half  a  mile  from  the 
cliff,  I  came  on  a  piece  of  ground  of  about  two  acres 
in  extent  surrounded  by  a  big  stone  hedge,  without 
gap  or  gate.  It  was  the  site  of  an  old  tin-mine 
abandoned  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago  and  walled  round 
to  prevent  the  domestic  animals  from  the  neighbour- 
ing farms  falling  into  the  pits.  It  was  strange  that  so 
much  trouble  had  been  taken  for  such  an  object,  as  in 
all  the  other  disused  mining  pits  I  had  come  upon  in 
the  district  the  holes  had  simply  been  covered  over 
with  wood  and  big  stones,  or  they  remained  open  and 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  95 

the  cattle  were  left  to  take  their  chance.  The  stone 
hedge  was  covered  with  a  thick  growth  of  furze,  and 
the  ground  inside,  protected  as  it  was  from  the  cattle 
and  sheltered  by  the  wall  from  the  furious  winds,  had 
become  a  dense  and  in  places  impenetrable  thicket  of 
blackthorn,  bramble,  furze  and  ivy.  So  close  did  the 
blackthorn  bushes  grow  with  their  upper  branches 
tightly  interwoven  that  it  would  have  been  possible  to 
walk  on  the  top  of  the  thicket  at  a  height  of  twelve 
or  fourteen  feet  from  the  ground  without  the  foot 
slipping  through.  There  were  three  pits,  and  one, 
very  much  enlarged  owing  to  the  quantity  of  earth 
which  had  fallen  in,  was  entirely  occupied  with  a  big 
elder  bush,  or  tree — a  curiosity  in  this  treeless  dis- 
trict. It  was  rooted  in  the  side  of  the  pit  about 
fourteen  feet  below  the  surface,  and  its  whole  height 
was  about  thirty  feet.  Near  the  root  the  trunk 
divided  into  three  great  branches,  or  boles,  and  on 
the  middle  one  there  was  an  old  magpie's  nest  on  a 
level  with  my  shoulders  and  a  little  beyond  the  reach 
of  my  hand.  The  birds  were  perhaps  wise  to  build 
in  such  a  place,  since  a  boy  could  not  easily  rob  it 
without  danger  of  falling  into  the  pit. 

On  going  to  this  walled-in  thicket  one  evening 
I  observed  a  vast  concourse  of  sparrows.  They  were 
sitting  on  the  bushes  in  thousands,  and  more  birds  in 
small  companies  of  a  dozen  or  so,  and  in  small  flocks 
of  fifty  to  a  hundred,  were  continually  arriving  and 
settling  down  among  the  others  to  add  their  voices  to 
the  extraordinary  hubbub  they  kept  up.  It  was  like 
a  starling's  winter  roosting-place,  and  the  birds  must 


96  THE   LAND'S   END 

have  come  from  all  the  homesteads  on  either  side  for 
a  good  many  miles.  These  birds,  I  found,  roosted 
in  the  old  pits,  and  when  they  had  all  disappeared 
from  sight  and  the  loud  noise  of  chirruping  had  died 
into  silence  I  walked  up  to  one  of  the  pits  and  stood 
over  it.  The  birds  took  alarm  and  began  to  issue 
out,  coming  up  in  rushes  of  several  hundreds  at  a 
time,  rush  succeeding  rush  at  intervals  of  a  few 
seconds  while  I  stood  by,  but  when  I  retired  to  some 
distance  the  birds  would  come  up  in  a  continuous 
stream  which  sometimes  looked  in  the  fading  light 
like  a  column  of  smoke  rising  from  the  ground. 

Three  months  later,  when  the  sparrows  were  breed- 
ing and  spending  their  nights  at  home,  I  revisited  the 
spot,  and  going  to  the  pit  with  the  elder  tree  growing 
in  it  had  a  fresh  look  at  the  old  magpie  nest.  And 
there  was  Mag  herself,  sitting  on  her  pretty  eggs 
under  her  roof  of  thorny  sticks  !  After  suffering 
my  presence  for  about  two  minutes  she  slipped  off 
and  went  away  without  a  sound.  Wishing  her  good 
luck  I  came  away,  as  I  did  not  want  to  make  her 
unhappy  by  too  long  a  visit. 

The  magpie  is  extremely  common  in  these  parts 
although  there  are  no  trees  for  them  to  breed  in. 
You  meet  with  him  twenty  times  a  day  when  out 
walking.  He  flies  up  a  distance  ahead,  rising  verti- 
cally, and  hovers  a  moment  to  get  a  good  look  at  you, 
then  hastens  away  on  rapidly-beating  wings  and  slopes 
off  into  the  furze  bushes,  displaying  his  open  gradu- 
ated tail.  He  haunts  the  homestead  and  is  frequently 
to  be  seen  associating  with  the  poultry  ;  there  are  no 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  97 

pheasants  here  and  no  gamekeepers  to  shoot  him, 
and,  as  in  Ireland,  the  people  do  not  like  to  injure 
though  they  do  not  love  him. 

If  you  chance  to  hear  a  bird  note  or  phrase  that  is 
new  to  you  in  this  place  you  may  be  sure  the  magpie 
is  its  author.  Like  the  jay  he  is  an  inventor  of  new 
sounds  and  has  a  somewhat  different  language  for 
every  part  of  the  country.  The  loud  brisk  chatter, 
his  alarm  note,  which  resembles  the  tremulous  bleat 
of  a  goat,  is  always  the  same  ;  but  his  ordinary  lan- 
guage, used  in  conversation,  when  he  is  with  his  mate 
or  a  small  party  of  friends,  is  curiously  varied  and  full 
of  surprises.  It  was  one  of  my  amusements  in  genial 
days  in  winter  when  a  confabulation  was  in  progress 
to  steal  as  near  as  I  could  and  sit  down  among  the 
bushes  to  listen. 

On  one  such  occasion,  where  the  furze  was  very 
thick  and  high,  I  discovered  that  the  bushes  all  round 
me  teemed  with  minute,  shadowy-looking  bird-forms 
silently  hopping  and  flitting  about.  They  were 
golden-crested  wrens  wintering  in  this  treeless  place 
in  considerable  numbers.  Some  of  the  small  boys  I 
talked  to  in  this  neighbourhood  knew  the  bird  as  the 
"Golden  Christian  Wrennie" — a  rather  pretty  variant. 

But  the  Golden  Christian  Wrennie  is  not  the  wren — 
not  the  Cornish  wren  ;  for  there  is  a  proper  Cornish 
wren,  even  as  there  is  a  St.  Kilda  wren,  and  as  there  is 
a  native  wren,  or  local  race  or  Troglodytes  parvulus,  in 
every  county,  in  every  village  and  farm-house  and 
wood  and  coppice  and  hedge  in  the  United  Kingdom. 
He  is  a  home-keeping  little  bird,  and  when  you  find 


98  THE   LAND'S   END 

him,  summer  or  winter,  in  town  or  country,  you  know 
that  he  is  a  native,  that  his  family  is  a  very  old  one  in 
that  part  and  was  probably  settled  there  before  the 
advent  of  blue-eyed  man  and  the  dawn  of  a  Bronze 
Age. 

He  is  universal,  and  that  gives  one  the  idea  that 
he  is  very  evenly  distributed  ;  but  I  had  no  sooner 
set  foot  in  this  "  westest  "  part  of  all  England  than 
1  found  the  wren  more  common  than  in  any  other 
part  of  the  country  known  to  me,  and  this  greatly 
pleased  me  because  of  my  love  of  him.  Indeed,  it 
was  the  prevalence  of  the  wren  which  made  the  West 
Cornwall  bird  life  seem  very  much  to  me,  despite  the 
fact  that  the  best  species  have  been  extirpated  or 
driven  away  and  that  no  peregrine  or  chough  or 
hoopoe,  or  other  distinguished  feathered  stranger, 
can  return  to  these  shores  and  not  be  instantly  massa- 
cred by  the  sportsmen,  ornithologists  and  private 
collectors.  But  the  common  little  wren  is  admired 
and  respected  by  every  one,  even  by  the  philistines. 
It  is  not  that  he  seeks  to  ingratiate  himself  with  us 
like  the  robin  ;  he  is  the  very  opposite  of  that 
friendly  little  creature,  and  indeed  I  like  him  as  much 
for  his  independence  as  for  his  other  sterling  quali- 
ties. You  may  feed  the  birds  every  day  in  cold 
weather  and  have  them  gather  in  crowds  to  gobble  up 
your  scraps,  but  you  will  not  find  the  wren  among 
them.  He  doesn't  want  of  your  chanty,  and  can  get 
his  own  living  in  all  seasons  and  in  all  places,  rough 
or  smooth,  as  you  will  find  if  you  walk  round  the 
coast  from  St.  Ives  to  Land's  End  or  to  Mount's  Bay. 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  99 

Not  a  furze  clump,  nor  stone  hedge,  nor  farm  build- 
ing, nor  old  ruined  tin -mine,  nor  rocky  headland, 
but  has  its  wren,  and  go  where  you  will  in  this  half- 
desert  silent  place  you  hear  at  intervals  his  sharp 
strident  note  ;  but  not  to  welcome  you.  Your  heavy 
footsteps  have  disturbed  and  brought  him  out  of  his 
hiding-place  to  look  at  you  and  vehemently  express 
his  astonishment  and  disapproval.  And  having  done 
so  he  vanishes  back  into  seclusion  and  dismisses  the 
fact  of  your  existence  from  his  busy  practical  little 
mind.  He  is  at  home,  but  not  to  you.  'Tis  the 
only  home  he  knows  and  he  likes  it  very  well,  finding 
his  food  and  roosting  by  night  and  rearing  his  young 
just  in  that  place,  with  fox  and  adder  and  other  deadly 
creatures  for  only  neighbours.  Such  a  mite  of  a  bird 
with  such  small  round  feeble  wings  and  no  more 
blood  in  him  than  would  serve  to  wet  a  weasel's 
whistle  !  Best  of  all  it  is  to  see  him  among  the  rude 
granite  rocks  of  a  headland,  living  in  the  roar  of  the 
sea  :  when  the  wind  falls  or  a  gleam  of  winter  sun- 
shine visits  earth  you  will  find  him  at  a  merry  game 
of  hide-and-seek  with  his  mate  among  the  crags, 
pausing  from  time  to  time  in  his  chase  to  pour  out 
that  swift  piercing  lyric  which  you  will  hear  a  thou- 
sand times  and  never  without  surprise  at  its  power 
and  brilliance. 

In  these  waste  stony  places,  where  the  wren  is 
common,  another  small  feathered  creature  was  with 
me  just  as  often — the  anxious,  irresolute  meadow 
pipit,  or  titlark,  who  is  the  very  opposite  in  character 
to  the  brisk,  vigorous,  positive  little  brown  bird  whose 


ioo  THE   LAND'S   END 

mind  is  made  up  and  who  does  everything  straight 
off.  Nevertheless  he  gave  me  almost  as  much 
pleasure,  only  it  was  a  somewhat  different  feeling— 
a  pleasure  of  a  pensive  kind  with  something  of  mys- 
tery in  it.  He  did  not  sing,  even  on  those  bright 
days  or  hours  in  January,  which  caused  such  silent 
ones  as  the  corn  bunting  and  pied  wagtail  to  break 
out  in  melody.  The  bell-like  tinkling  strain  he 
utters  when  soaring  up  and  dropping  to  earth  is  for 
summer  only  :  it  is  that  faint  fairy-like  aerial  music 
which  you  hear  on  wide  moors  and  commons  and  lonely 
hillsides.  In  winter  he  has  no  language  but  that  one 
sharp  sorrowful  little  call,  or  complaint,  the  most 
anxious  sound  uttered  by  any  small  bird  in  these 
islands.  It  is  a  sound  that  suits  the  place,  and  when 
the  wind  blows  hard,  bringing  the  noise  of  the  waves 
to  your  ears,  and  the  salt  spray  ;  when  all  the  sky  is 
one  grey  cloud,  and  sea  mists  sweep  over  the  earth  at 
intervals  blurring  the  outline  of  the  hills,  that  thin 
but  penetrative  little  sad  call  seems  more  appropriate 
than  ever  and  in  tune  with  Nature  and  the  mind. 
The  movements,  too,  of  the  unhappy  little  creature 
have  a  share  in  the  impression  he  makes  ;  he  flings 
himself  up,  as  it  were,  before  your  footsteps  out  of  the 
brown  heath,  pale  tall  grasses  and  old  dead  bracken, 
and  goes  off  as  if  blown  away  by  the  wind,  then 
returns  to  you  as  if  blown  back,  and  hovers  and  goes 
to  this  side,  then  to  that,  now  close  to  you,  a  little 
sombre  bird,  and  anon  in  appearance  a  mere  dead  leaf 
or  feather  whirled  away  before  the  blast.  During  the 
uncertain  flight,  and  when,  at  intervals,  he  drops  upon 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   WINTER  101 

a  rock  close  by,  he  continues  to  emit  the  sharp  sorrow- 
ful note,  and  if  you  listen  it  infects  your  mind  with 
its  sadness  and  mystery.  You  can  imagine  that  the 
wind-blown  feathered  mite  is  not  what  it  seems,  a 
mere  pipit,  but  a  spirit  of  that  place-,  in :$htt 'shape  -ii-ct 
with  the  voice  of  a  mournful  little  bird— a  spirit  that 
cannot  go  away  nor  die,  nor  ever  fovgef;  the  unbappy 
things  it  witnessed  in  pity  and  terror  long  ages  gone 
when  an  ancient  people,  or  a  fugitive  remnant, 
gathered  at  this  desolate  end  of  all  the  land — a  tragedy 
so  old  that  it  was  forgotten  on  the  earth  and  those 
who  had  part  in  it  turned  to  dust  thousands  of 
years  ago. 


CHAPTER   IX 
THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS 

A  primitive  type — Unintelligible  speech — The  little  dark  man — The 
prevailing  type  blonde — The  Dawn  in  Britain — Cornish  speech  and 
"  naughty  English  " — Two  modes  of  speaking — Voice  and  intona- 
tion—  Chapel  singing  —  The  farmer's  politics  —  Preachers  and 
people — Life  on  a  farm — Furze  as  fuel — Food — Healthy  and 
happy  children — Children  in  procession — The  power  of  the  child. 

ONE  afternoon  I  watched  the  gambols  and  mock 
fights  of  three  ravens  among  the  big  boulder 
stones  at  a  spot  a  little  way  back  from  the 
cliff,  and  seeing  a  man  occupied  in  pulling  up  swedes 
in  a  field  not  very  far  off,  I  thought  I  would  go  and 
speak  to  him  about  the  birds,  as  they  haunted  the 
spot  regularly  and  he  would  perhaps  be  able  to  tell 
me  if  they  ever  bred  in  the  neighbouring  cliffs.  I 
knew  the  man  by  sight,  also  that  he  was  a  native  of 
the  place  and  never  in  his  fifty  odd  years  had  been 
further  than  about  ten  miles  away  from  it.  He  called 
himself  a  "  farmer,"  being  the  tenant  of  a  small  hold- 
ing of  about  a  dozen  or  fifteen  acres  and  a  small 

102 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     103 

cottage  which  was  the  "  farm-house."  He  was  a 
curious-looking  undersized  man  with  a  small  narrow 
wizened  face,  small  cunning  restless  eyes  of  no 
colour,  and  reddish  yellow  eyebrows,  perpetually 
moving  up  and  down.  He  reminded  me  of  an 
orang-utan  and  at  the  same  time  of  a  wild  Irishman 
of  a  very  low  type. 

I  talked  to  him  about  the  ravens,  pointing  to  them, 
and  he,  presently  recalling  1  dare  say  some  exciting 
adventure  he  had  met  with  in  connection  with  the 
birds,  began  to  tell  me  the  strangest  story  I  had  ever 
listened  to.  It  was  absolutely  unintelligible ;  the 
strangeness  was  in  his  manner  of  delivering  it.  He 
grinned  and  he  grimaced,  swinging  his  long  thin 
sinewy  monkey-like  arms  about,  jerking  his  body, 
and  making  many  odd  gestures,  while  pouring  out  a 
torrent  of  gibberish,  interspersed  with  Caffre-like 
clicks  and  other  inarticulate  sounds  ;  then  throwing 
himself  back  he  stared  up  at  me,  wrinkling  his  fore- 
head, winking  and  blinking,  as  much  as  to  say  "  Now 
what  do  you  think  of  that  ? " 

"  Yes,  just  so  ;  dear  me  !  very  wonderful  ! "  I 
returned  ;  and  then,  after  treating  me  to  another 
torrent,  he  threw  himself  back  on  his  swedes  and  I 
walked  off. 

I  discovered  that  this  little  man,  who,  when  ex- 
citedly talking  and  gesticulating,  was  hardly  like  a 
human  being,  was  one  of  a  type  which  is  not  ex- 
cessively rare  on  this  coast.  He  differed  from  others 
of  his  kind  whom  I  met  only  in  his  reddish  colour. 
The  proper  colour  of  this  kind  is  dark.  On  the 


io4  THE   LAND'S   END 

St.  Ives  beach  I  one  day  saw  another  specimen.  He 
was  in  the  middle  of  an  altercation  with  a  carter  who 
was  loading  his  cart  with  dogfish  which  the  fish- 
buyers  had  turned  up  their  noses  at  and  so  it  had  to 
be  sold  for  manure.  He  was  in  a  state  of  intense 
excitement,  dancing  about  on  the  sands  and  dis- 
charging a  torrent  of  wild  gibberish  at  the  other. 
I  remarked  to  a  young  Cornishman  who  was  standing 
there  looking  on  and  listening,  that  I  could  not 
understand  a  word  and  could  hardly  believe  that  all 
the  man's  jabber  really  meant  anything.  "  I  can 
understand  him  very  well,"  said  the  young  man  : 
"he  is  talking  proper  Cornish'' 

At  Sennen  Cove  I  came  upon  yet  another  example : 
he  too  was  in  a  dancing  rage  when  I  first  saw  him, 
chattering,  screeching  and  gesticulating  more  like  a 
frenzied  monkey  than  a  human  being.  The  man  he 
was  abusing  was  a  big  stolid  fisherman,  who  stood 
with  his  hands  in  his  trouser  pockets,  a  clay  pipe  in 
his  mouth,  perfectly  unmoved,  like  a  post  :  it  was  a 
wonderful  contrast  and  altogether  a  very  strange 
scene. 

This  small,  dark,  peppery  man,  who  is  found 
throughout  the  country,  and  whose  chief  character- 
istics appear  to  be  intensified  in  West  Cornwall,  is  no 
doubt  a  survival  or,  more  properly  speaking,  a  rever- 
sion to  a  very  ancient  type  in  this  country.  At  all 
events,  there  is  a  vast  difference  between  this  little 
blackie  or  brownie  of  Bolerium  and  the  prevailing 
type.  The  man  of  the  ordinary  type  is  medium-sized 
and  has  a  broad  head,  high  cheek-bones,  light  hair, 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     105 

and  grey-blue  eyes.  The  "  recognised  authorities  " 
are  not,  I  imagine,  wholly  to  be  trusted  on  the  ques- 
tion of  colour  :  the  southern  half  of  Hampshire 
appears  to  me  more  of  a  dark  or  black  province  than 
Cornwall.  Probably  the  author  of  the  noble  epic,  The 
Dawn  in  Britain,  was  misled  by  the  anthropologists 
when  he  made  his  Cornishmen  who  came  to  the  war 
against  the  Roman  a  dark  people  :— 

Who  came,  strange  island  people,  to  the  war, 
Men  bearded,  bearing  moon-bent  shields,  unlike, 
Of  a  dark  speech,  to  other  Britons  are 
Belerians,  workers  in  the  tinny  mines 
Of  Penrhyn  Gnawd,  which  Bloody  Foreland  named, 
Decit  their  king  upleads  them,  now  in  arms. 

At  Calleva,  in  which  the  Romans  were  besieged  by 
the  Britons,  in  Book  xiii,  and  again  in  Books  xv 
and  xvi,  after  the  tremendous  battle  of  the  Thames, 
when  the  army  of  Claudius  was  opposed  in  its  march 
to  Verulam,  and,  finally,  at  Camulodunum,  we  meet 
with  this  contingent  : — 

When  swart  Belerians,  on  blue  Briton's  part  .  .  . 

Who  midst  moon-shielded  swart  Belerians  rides 
Is  Decit.  .  .  . 

Halts  swart  Belerian  king,  lo,  on  his  spear  .  .  . 

Therefore  have  swart  Belerians  crowned  his  brow 
With  holy  misselden. 

This  is  odd  in  one  to  whom  the  Celts  were  a  tall, 
fair-skinned,  god-like  people,  and  who,  worshipping 
their  memory,  abhors  and  hurls  curses  at  all  the 


io6 


THE   LAND'S   END 


nations  and  races  of  the  earth  that  were  at  enmity 
with  them,  from  the  conquering  Romans  back  even 
to  the  little  fierce,  shrill,  brown-skinned  Iberians, 
"  greedy  as  hawks,"  who  had  the  temerity  to  oppose 
them  even  as  in  our  own  day  the  little  yellow 
Japanese  opposed  the  white  and  god-like  Muscovites. 

For  to  his  mind  the 
events  he  relates  are 
true,  and  the  mighty 
men  he  brings  before 
us,  from  Brennus  to 
Caractacus,  as  real  as 
any  Beduin  he  hob- 
nobbed with  in  Arabia 
Deserta.  Perhaps  it 
is  even  odder,  with 
regard  to  this  epic, 
which  is  undoubtedly 
the  greatest  piece  of 
literature  the  young 
century  has  produced, 
that  it  should  be  the 
work  of  an  Irishman,  and  from  beginning  to  end  a 
glorification  of  the  Celts,  yet  wholly  and  intensely 
Saxon  in  its  character,  with  no  trace  of  that  special 
quality  which  distinguishes  the  Celtic  imagination. 

To  return.  The  speech  of  the  Cornish  people  is 
another  subject  about  which  erroneous  ideas  may  be 
got  from  reading.  Norden  wrote  that  the  native  lan- 
guage was  declining  in  his  day,  and  adds :  "But  of  late 
the  Cornishe  men  have  much  conformed  themselves 


THE    CORNISH    CELT 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS      107 

to  the  use  of  the  Englishe  toung  and  their  Englishe  is 
equall  to  the  beste."  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  was 
speaking  of  the  gentry,  but  hasty  makers  of  books 
who  came  after  him  took  it  to  mean  that  the  people 
generally  spoke  good  English,  and  this  statement  has 
been  repeated  in  books  down  to  the  present  day. 
Andrew  Borde,  in  his  Eo\e  of  the  Introduction  of  Kno- 
ledge^  1542,  wrote  :  "  In  Cornwall  is  two  speeches,  the 
one  is  naughty  Englische,  and  the  other  Cornysshe 
speeche."  The  last  has  been  long  dead,  and  dead  will 
remain  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  one  enthusiast  who 
hopes  to  revive  it  and  has  actually  written  a  sonnet  in 
Cornish  just  to  prove  that  it  can  be  done ;  but 
"  naughty  Englische  "  is  still  generally  spoken,  though 
very  much  less  naughty  than  the  "  proper  Cornish  " 
which  I  have  described  as  quite  unintelligible  to  a 
stranger. 

It  was  explained  to  me  by  a  gentleman,  resident  for 
many  years  in  West  Cornwall,  a  student  of  the  people, 
that  they  have  two  distinct  ways  of  speaking,  especi- 
ally in  the  villages  along  the  coast  and  in  places  much 
frequented  by  visitors.  In  speaking  to  strangers  they 
enunciate  their  words  with  deliberation  so  as  to  be 
understood,  and  those  among  them  who  have  a  good 
deal  of  practice  succeed  very  well  ;  but  among  them- 
selves they  speak  in  a  hurried  manner,  slurring  over 
or  omitting  half  the  syllables  in  half  the  words,  so 
that  it  is  most  difficult  to  follow  them.  I  am  con- 
vinced from  my  own  observation  that  he  is  right. 
I  have  sat  conversing  with  a  knot  of  fishermen,  and 
after  a  while  become  silent,  pretending  to  fall  into  a 


108  THE   LAND'S   END 

brown  study  while  listening  all  the  time,  and  they, 
seeing  me  absorbed  in  my  own  thoughts,  as  they 
imagined,  have  dropped  quite  naturally  into  their 
own  familiar  lingo. 

Here  is  another  instance.  There  was  one  cottage 
I  always  liked  to  visit  to  sit  for  an  hour  with  the 
family  and  sometimes  have  a  meal  with  them  just  for 
the  pleasure  of  listening  to  the  wife,  a  thin,  active, 
voluble  woman,  who  was  a  remarkably  good  speaker, 
and  what  was  even  more  to  me,  a  lover  of  all  wild 
creatures — a  rare  thing  in  a  Cornish  peasant.  Or 
perhaps  I  should  say  all  creatures  save  one — the 
adder.  Once,  she  told  me,  when  she  was  a  little  girl 
she  was  running  home  over  the  furze-grown  hill  from 
school  when  she  came  upon  an  adder  in  the  act  of 
devouring  a  nestful  of  fledglings.  She  stood  still  and 
gazed,  horror-stricken,  as  it  slowly  bolted  bird  after 
bird,  and  then  fled  home  crying  with  grief  and  pain 
at  what  she  had  witnessed,  and  never  from  that  day 
had  she  seen  or  thought  of  an  adder  without  shudder- 
ing. Now  it  almost  invariably  happened  that  in 
relating  her  experiences  she  would  become  excited  at 
the  most  interesting  part,  and  in  her  heat  speak  more 
and  more  rapidly  and  change  from  plain  understand- 
able English  to  "  naughty  English "  or  "  proper 
Cornish,"  and  so  cause  me  to  lose  the  very  point  of 
the  story.  Tonkin,  the  Cornish  historian,  when  the 
old  language  was  well  -  nigh  dead,  described  the 
people's  speech  as  a  jargon  "  the  peculiarity  of  which 
was  a  striking  uncertainty  of  the  speaker  as  to  where 
one  word  left  off  and  another  began." 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     109 

The  voice  is  not  musical,  but  in  young  people  who 
have  not  lost  the  quiet  low  manner  of  speaking  ac- 
quired at  school  and  gone  back  to  the  original  noisy 
gabble,  it  often  sounds  pleasant.  There  is  an  intona- 
tion, or  sing-song,  which  varies  slightly  in  different 
localities  :  some  fine  ears  can  tell  you  to  which  village 
or  "  church-town,"  as  they  say,  a  man  belongs  by  his 
intonation.  As  a  rule  it  is  a  slight  raising  of  the 
voice  at  the  last,  and  dwelling  on  it,  and  on  any  word 
in  the  sentence  on  which  the  emphasis  naturally  falls, 
and  is  like  singing.  When  you  get  young  people 
with  fresh,  clear  voices  talking  together  with  anima- 
tion, the  speech  falls  into  a  kind  of  recitative  and  has 
a  rather  pleasing  effect.  But  the  voice  appears  to 
harden  and  grow  harsh  with  years,  and  acquires  a  dis- 
agreeable metallic  quality.  A  good  singer  is,  I 
imagine,  a  great  rarity.  The  loud  and  hearty  sing- 
ing in  the  chapels  is  rather  distressing.  In  a  Bible 
Christian  place  of  worship,  when  Baring  Gould's  hymn 
"  Onward,  Christian  soldiers,"  was  being  sung,  I  was 
almost  deafened  by  the  way  in  which  the  congrega- 
tion bellowed  out  the  lines — 

Hell's  foundations  tremble 
At  our  shout  of  praise. 

And  small  wonder,  I  thought,  if  any  sense  of  harmony 
survives  down  there  ! 

Of  speaking  and  singing  I  heard  more  than  enough 
during  my  first  winter  (1905-6),  as  it  was  a  time  of 
political  agitation.  The  excitement  was,  however, 
mostly  in  the  towns.  Fishermen  and  miners  were 


no  THE   LAND'S   END 

almost  to  a  man  on  the  Liberal  side,  led  by  their 
ministers,  who  were  eagerly  looking  to  have  their 
revenge  on  the  Church ;  while  those  on  the  land  were, 
despite  their  Methodism,  on  the  other  side,  but  with 
small  hopes  of  winning.  They  appeared  to  be  in  a 
reticent  and  somewhat  sullen  humour  :  it  was  hard  to 
get  a  word  out  of  them,  but  I  one  day  succeeded 
with  a  farmer  I  was  slightly  acquainted  with.  I  found 
him  in  a  field  mending  a  gate,  and  after  telling  him 
the  news  and  guessing  what  his  politics  were,  I  teased 
him  with  little  mocking  remarks  about  the  way  things 
electoral  were  going,  until  he  was  thoroughly  aroused, 
and  burst  out  in  a  manner  that  fairly  astonished  me. 
Yes,  he  was  a  Conservative,  he  angrily  exclaimed. 
Being  on  the  land,  what  else  could  he  be  ?  Only  a 
blind  fool  or  a  traitor  to  his  fellows  could  be  anything 
different  if  he  got  his  living  from  the  land.  He 
didn't  knaw  the  man  as  thought  different  to  he.  But 
they — the  farmers — were  going  to  be  beat,  he  knew 
well  enough.  'Twas  bound  to  be,  seeing  the  other 
side  had  the  numbers.  They  had  the  town  people — 
small  tradesmen,  fishers,  workmen  and  all  them  that 
passed  their  time  leaning  against  a  wall  with  their 
hands  in  their  pockets — the  unemployed  as  they  was 
called  now-days.  We  didn't  use  to  call  them  that ! 
The  Liberals  with  their  promises  had  got  them  on 
their  side.  What  did  they  think  they'd  get  ?  To 
live  without  work  ?  That  pay  would  be  better, 
clothes  and  food  cheaper — miners  to  get  two  pounds 
a  week,  or  three,  'stead  of  thirty  shillings  ;  a  fisher- 
man to  get  twice  as  much  for  his  fish,  so  that  after  a 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     in 

good  catch  he'd  be  able  to  sit  down  and  rest  for  six 
months  ?  No  more  work  for  we !  Yes,  many 
expected  that.  Anyhow  they'd  all  git  something 
because  'twas  promised  'em  —  better  pay,  better 
times.  But  you  can't  have  something  for  nothing, 
can  you  ?  Who's  to  pay  for  it  then  ?  They  don't 
bother  about  that ;  'twill  have  to  come  somehow-^- 
maybe  from  the  land.  Yes,  the  land's  to  pay  for 
everything  !  Did  any  of  them  town  idlers,  them  that 
worked  a  day  or  two  once  a  week  or  month — did 
they  knaw  what  the  land  gave  ?  Did  they  knaw  what 
'tis  to  git  up  before  dawn  every  day,  Sundays  as  well, 
and  work  all  day  till  after  dark,  all  just  for  a  bare 
living  ?  But  you  work  the  land,  they'll  say,  you  don't 
own  it — 'tis  the  landlords  we've  got  to  get  it  out  of. 
'Twill  come  out  of  the  profits.  Will  it  ?  That's  just 
what  I'd  like  to  knaw.  We  pay  a  pound  or  two  an 
acre  with  all  the  rough  and  stones,  and  we  pay  tithes. 
And  what  do  the  landlords  git  ?  There's  rich  and 
poor  and  big  and  little  among  'em,  the  same  as  in 
everything.  If  he  owns  a  hundred  thousand  acres 
he's  well  off,  however  little  the  land  pays.  But  what 
if  he  owns  only  a  few  small  farms,  like  most  of  them 
in  these  parts — can  he  live  and  bring  up  his  sons  to 
be  anything  better  than  labourers,  or  just  what  we 
farmers  are,  out  of  it  ?  If  I  owned  this  land  myself 
and  had  to  pay  all  my  landlord  pays,  I  don't  think  I'd 
be  much  better  off  than  I  am  now.  I'd  have  to  work 
the  same.  What  do  they  mean,  then,  by  saying  the 
land  will  pay  ?  I  knaw — I'll  tell  you.  It  means  that 
the  land's  here  and  can't  be  hidden  and  can't  be 


ii2  THE   LAND'S   END 

taken  out  of  the  country,  and  them  who  own  it  and 
them  that  make  their  living  out  of  it  can  be  robbed 
better  than  anybody  else.  That's  how  them  that 
are  not  on  the  land  will  get  their  something  for 
nothing. 

What  most  interested  me  was  the  manner  in  which 
this  discourse  was  delivered.  In  conversation  he  had  the 
hard  metallic  Cornish  voice  without  any  perceptible 
intonation  ;  now  in  his  excitement  he  fell  into  some- 
thing like  a  chant,  keeping  time  with  hands  and  legs, 
swinging  his  arms,  striking  his  foot  on  the  ground, 
and  jerking  his  whole  body  up  and  down.  Even  so 
might  some  Cornish  warrior  of  the  ancient  days  have 
harangued  his  followers  and  tried  to  inspire  in  them 
a  fury  equal  to  his  own.  Even  the  cows  two  or  three 
fields  away  raised  their  heads  and  gazed  in  our  direc- 
tion, wondering  what  the  shouting  was  about. 

As  for  the  matter  of  his  discourse,  he  expressed 
the  feeling  common  among  the  farming  people — the 
fear  of  change  was  on  them.  The  odd  thing  is  that 
the  people  generally,  including  miners,  fishermen  and 
others  of  their  class,  are  haters  of  innovation,  even  as 
the  farmers  are,  which  does  not  promise  them  some 
material  benefit,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  this 
case  they  did  confidently  expect  some  good  thing,  and 
it  pleased  them  to  think  their  ministers  were  on  their 
side.  They  knew  that  their  ministers  were  aiming 
at  something  which  they  cared  very  little  about  :  it 
was  an  alliance  and  nothing  more.  They  are  not 
dominated  by  their  ministers,  and,  excepting  some  of 
the  local  preachers,  do  not  share  their  malignant  hatred 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     113 

of  the  Church.  On  the  contrary  I  found  it  a  usual 
thing  for  the  chapel  people  to  go  occasionally  to  church 
as  well,  and  many  made  it  a  practice  to  go  every  Sun- 
day to  the  evening  service.  It  is  also  common  for  the 
chapel-goers  to  send  for  the  vicar  when  in  want  of 
spiritual  aid.  The  minister  often  enough  tells  the 
applicant  to  go  to  the  vicar  who  is  "  paid  to  do  it." 
I  talked  to  scores  of  people  about  the  education 
question  and  could  hardly  find  one  in  ten  to  manifest 
the  slightest  interest  in  it.  The  people  had  no  quarrel 
with  the  Church  on  that  question,  although  their 
ministers  were  preaching  to  them  every  Sunday  about 
it.  These  preachers  were  Scotchmen,  Midlanders, 
Londoners — anything  but  Cornishmen — and  in  most 
cases  knew  as  much  about  the  Cornish  as  they  did 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Mars.  They  knew  what  the 
Methodist  Society  wanted  and  that  was  enough  for 
them. 

Now  I  cared  little  about  all  this  political  pother. 
While  I  listened  and  could  not  avoid  listening,  I  was 
like  one  who  hears  a  military  band  with  loud  braying 
of  brass  instruments  and  rub-a-dub  of  drums,  but  is 
at  the  same  time  giving  an  attentive  ear  to  some  small 
sound  issuing  from  some  leafy  hiding-place  in  the 
vicinity — the  delicate  small  warble  of  a  willow-wren, 
let  us  say.  And  the  willow-wren  in  this  case  was  the 
real  heart  of  the  people,  not  all  this  imported  artificial 
noise  in  the  air.  That  alone  was  what  interested  me  ; 
it  was  a  relief  to  escape  from  the  ridiculous  hubbub 
into  one  of  the  small  farm-houses,  to  live  with  the 
people  in  a  house  that  never  saw  a  newspaper,  where 


1 14  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  farmer  and  his  wife  minded  their  farm  and  were 
very  proud  of  getting  the  highest  price  in  the  market 
for  their  butter. 

Life  on  these  small  farms  is  incredibly  rough. 
One  may  guess  what  it  is  like  from  the  outward 
aspect  of  such  places.  Each,  it  is  true,  has  its  own 
individual  character,  but  they  are  all  pretty  much 
alike  in  their  dreary,  naked  and  almost  squalid  ap- 
pearance. Each,  too,  has  its  own  ancient  Cornish 
name,  some  of  these  very  fine  or  very  pretty,  but 
you  are  tempted  to  rename  them  in  your  own  mind 
Desolation  Farm,  Dreary  Farm,  Stony  Farm,  Bleak 
Farm,  and  Hungry  Farm.  The  farm-house  is  a 
small  low  place  and  invariably  built  of  granite,  with 
no  garden  or  bush  or  flower  about  it.  The  one  I 
stayed  at  was  a  couple  of  centuries  old,  but  no  one 
had  ever  thought  of  growing  anything,  even  a  mari- 
gold, to  soften  its  bare  harsh  aspect.  The  house 
itself  could  hardly  be  distinguished  from  the  out- 
houses clustered  round  it.  Several  times  on  coming 
back  to  the  house  in  a  hurry  and  not  exercising 
proper  care  I  found  I  had  made  for  the  wrong  door 
and  got  into  the  cow-house,  or  pig-house,  or  a  shed 
of  some  sort,  instead  of  into  the  human  habitation. 
The  cows  and  other  animals  were  all  about  and 
you  came  through  deep  mud  into  the  living-room. 
The  pigs  and  fowls  did  not  come  in  but  were  other- 
wise free  to  go  where  they  liked.  The  rooms  were 
very  low  ;  my  hair,  when  I  stood  erect,  just  brushed 
the  beams ;  but  the  living-room  or  kitchen  was 
spacious  for  so  small  a  house,  and  had  the  wide  old 


CORNISH    FARM-HOUSE 


To  face  page 


THE   PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS     115 

open  fireplace  still  common  in  this  part  of  the  country. 
Any  other  form  of  fireplace  would  not  be  suitable 
when  the  fuel  consists  of  furze  and  turf. 

Here  I  had  the  feeling  of  being  back  in  one  of 
those  primitive  cattle-breeding  establishments,  or 
estancias  as  they  are  called,  on  the  South  American 
pampas,  where  every  one,  dogs  and  cats  included, 


CORNISH    FARM-HOUSES 

lived  in  the  big  smoke-blackened  kitchen  by  day,  and 
the  fuel  was  dried  stalks  of  Cardoon  thistle  and 
various  other  stout  annuals,  with  dried  cow-dung  for 
peat,  and  greasy  strong-smelling  bones  of  dead  horses, 
cows  and  sheep.  It  was  like  an  illusion,  so  that  I  was 
continually  on  the  point  of  addressing  the  children 
playing  on  the  floor  in  Spanish,  or  in  gaucho  lingo,  to 
name  every  dog  "  Pechicho  "  and  call  "  Mees-mees  " 
instead  of  "  Pussy-pussy  "  to  a  cat. 


n6  THE   LAND'S   END 

By  day  I  was  out  of  doors,  wet  or  fine,  but  in  the 
evening — and  it  was  when  evenings  were  longest — 
I  sat  with  the  others  and  gazed  into  the  cavernous 
fireplace  and  basked  and  shivered  in  the  alternating 
bursts  of  heat  and  cold.  As  a  rule,  the  round  baking- 
pot  was  on  its  polished  stone  on  the  hearth,  with 
smouldering  turves  built  up  round  it  and  heaped  on 
the  flat  lid.  In  some  parts  of  Cornwall  they  have 
good  peat,  called  "  pudding  turves,"  which  makes 
a  hot  and  comparatively  lasting  fire.  In  the  Land's 
End  district  they  have  only  the  turf  taken  from  the 
surface,  which  makes  the  poorest  of  all  fires,  but  it 
has  to  serve.  By  and  by  the  big  home-made  loaf 
would  be  done,  and  when  taken  out  would  fill  the 
room  with  its  wholesome  smell — one  is  almost 
tempted  to  call  it  fragrance.  But  to  make  a  blaze 
and  get  any  warmth  furze  was  burnt.  On  the  floor 
at  one  side  of  the  hearth  there  was  always  a  huge  pile 
of  it ;  the  trouble  was  that  it  burnt  up  too  quickly 
and  took  one  person's  whole  time  to  keep  the  fire 
going.  This  onerous  task  was  usually  performed  by 
the  farmer's  wife,  who,  after  an  exceedingly  busy  day 
beginning  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  appeared  to 
regard  it  as  a  kind  of  rest  or  recreation.  Standing 
between  the  hearth  and  pile  she  would  pick  up  the 
top  branch,  and  if  too  big  with  all  its  load  of  dry 
spines  she  would  divide  it,  using  her  naked  hands, 
and  fling  a  portion  on  to  the  hearth.  In  a  few 
moments  the  dry  stuff  would  ignite  and  burn  with 
a  tremendous  hissing  and  crackling,  the  flames  spring- 
ing up  to  a  height  of  seven  or  eight  feet  in  the  vast 


THE    PEOPLE   AND   THE   FARMS      117 

hollow  chimney.  For  a  minute  or  two  the  whole  big 
room  would  be  almost  too  hot  and  lit  up  as  by 
a  flash  of  lightning.  Then  the  roaring  flames  would 
sink  and  vanish,  leaving  nothing  but  a  bed  of  grey 
ashes,  jewelled  with  innumerable  crimson  and  yellow 
sparks,  rapidly  diminishing.  Then  I  would  begin  to 
think  that  "  sitting  by  the  fire "  in  this  land  was 
a  mockery,  that  I  was  not  warmed  and  made 
happy  like  a  serpent  in  the  sun,  but  was  overcome 
from  time  to  time  by  gusts  of  intolerable  heat  and 
light,  with  intervals  of  gloom  that  was  almost  dark- 
ness and  bitter  cold  between.  I  should  not  have 
cared  to  spend  the  entire  bitterly-cold  winter  of 
1 906-7  with  no  better  fuel,  but  for  a  time  I  liked  it 
well  enough  ;  it  was  a  pleasure  to  feel  the  stirring  to 
life  of  old  instincts,  to  recover  the  associations  which 
fire  has  for  one  that  has  lived  in  rude  lands  ;  and 
then,  too,  the  glorious  effect  of  the  blaze  at  its 
greatest  was  intensified  by  the  cold  and  gloom  that 
preceded  and  followed  it. 

As  I  wished  to  know  how  they  lived  I  had  the 
ordinary  fare  and  found  it  quite  good  enough  for  any 
healthy  person  :  pork  fattened  on  milk  and  home- 
cured  ;  milk  (from  the  cow)  and  Cornish  clotted 
cream,  which  is  unrivalled  ;  sometimes  a  pasty,  in 
which  a  little  chopped-up  meat  is  mixed  with  sliced 
turnip  and  onion  and  baked  in  a  crust,  and  finally  the 
thin  Cornish  broth  with  sliced  swedes  which  give  it 
a  sweetish  taste.  Then  there  was  the  very  excellent 
home-made  bread,  and  saffron  cake,  on  which  the 
Cornish  child  is  weaned  and  which  he  goes  on  eating 


n8  THE   LAND'S   END 

until  the  last  day  of  his  life.  With  every  meal  they 
drink  tea.  They  are  very  good  eaters  :  one  day  the 
farmer's  wife  told  me  that  each  one  of  her  six  little 
children  consumed  just  double  what  I  did.  And  the 
result  of  this  abundance  and  of  an  open-air  life  in 
that  wet  and  windy  country  is  that  the  people  are  as 
healthy  and  strong  and  long-lived  as  any  in  the  world. 

The  children  are  wonderful.  You  may  go  to 
village  after  village  and  look  in  vain  for  a  sickly  or 
unhappy  face  among  them.  It  is  true  you  do  not  find 
the  very  beautiful  children  one  often  sees  in  both 
England  and  Ireland,  the  angelic  children  with  shin- 
ing golden  hair,  eyes  of  violet  or  pure  forget-me-not 
blue  and  exquisite  flesh  tints,  nor  do  you  find  children 
with  so  much  charm.  They  are,  generally  speaking, 
more  commonplace  ;  the  wonder  is  in  their  uniform 
high  state  of  well-being.  One  of  the  prettiest  scenes 
I  ever  beheld  was  a  procession  on  Empire  Day,  May 
24,  of  all  the  school  children  in  Penzance.  They 
were  all,  even  to  the  poorest,  prettily  dressed,  and 
those  of  a  good  number  of  schools,  Catholic,  Metho- 
dist and  Anglican,  had  very  beautiful  distinctive  cos- 
tumes. As  I  watched  the  mile-long  procession  going 
by  in  Market  Jew  Street,  every  face  aglow  with  happy 
excitement,  I  began  to  search  in  the  ranks  for  one 
that  was  thin  and  sad-looking  or  pale  or  anaemic,  but 
failed  to  find  such  a  one. 

We  have  been  told  by  an  English  traveller  in  Japan 
that  children  are  best  off  in  that  land  where  a  mother 
is  never  seen  to  slap  or  heard  to  scold  her  child,  and 
where  a  child  is  never  heard  to  cry.  Now  a  Japanese 


THE   PEOPLE   AND  THE   FARMS      119 

visitor  to  England  has  informed  us  that  it  is  not  so, 
that  mothers  do  sometimes  slap  or  scold  a  child,  and 
children  do  sometimes  cry.  I  can  say  the  same  of 
West  Cornwall,  and  nevertheless  believe  that  com- 
pared with  other  parts  of  England  it  is  a  children's 
paradise.  A  common  complaint  made  by  English 
residents  is  that  the  children  are  not  taught  to  know 
their  place — that  they  do  just  what  they  like. 
"  When  my  children  want  to  go  anywhere,"  a  mother 
said  to  me,  "  they  do  not  ask  my  permission  :  but 
they  are  very  good — they  always  tell  me  where  they 
are  going.  I  do  not  forbid  them  because  I  know 
they  would  go  just  the  same."  The  schoolmaster  in 
a  village  I  stayed  at  told  me  as  an  instance  of  the 
power  the  children  have  that  one  morning  on  passing 
a  cottage  he  heard  sounds  of  crying  and  voices  in 
loud  argument  and  went  in  to  ascertain  the  cause. 
He  found  the  man  and  his  wife  and  their  two  little 
children — Billy  the  boy  and  Winnie  the  girl,  aged 
nine — all  in  great  distress.  The  man  had  received 
a  letter  from  his  cousin  in  Constantine  to  say  that  the 
village  festival  was  about  to  take  place  and  inviting 
him  to  go  to  him  on  a  two  or  three  days'  visit  and  to 
take  Billy.  He  wanted  to  go  and  so,  of  course,  did 
Billy,  and  now  Winnie  had  said  that  she  must  be  taken 
too  !  In  vain  they  had  reasoned  with  her,  pointing 
out  that  she  could  not  go  because  she  had  not  been 
included  in  the  invitation  ;  she  simply  said  that  if 
Billy  went  she  would  go,  and  from  that  position  they 
could  not  move  her.  The  result  was  that  the  visit  to 
Constantine  had  to  be  abandoned  ;  the  good  man 


120  THE   LAND'S   END 

sadly  informed  the  schoolmaster  a  day  or  two  later 
that  Winnie  had  refused  to  let  them  go  without  her  ! 
The  odd  thing,  my  informant  said,  was  that  there  was 
no  attempt  on  the  parents'  part  to  put  the  child  down. 
The  children,  he  said,  are  masters  of  the  situation  in 
these  parts  :  the  way  they  lorded  it  over  their  parents 
had  amazed  him  when  he  first  came  from  a  Midland 
district  to  live  among  them. 

But  I  must  say  for  the  little  ones  that  they  do  not 
as  a  rule  abuse  their  authority.  They  are  so  healthy, 
and  have  such  happy  and  affectionate  dispositions, 
that  they  do  behave  very  well.  Winnie  was  an 
exceptionally  naughty  little  maid  and  required  some 
such  drastic  method  as  that  which  Solomon  advocated, 
but  for  the  generality  the  system  in  favour  is  after  all 
the  one  best  suited  to  them. 


CHAPTER   X 
AN    IMPRESSION   OF   PENZANCE 

Value  of  first  impressions — Market  day  in  Penzance — Cornish  cows 
— The  main  thoroughfare — Characteristics — Temperance  in  drink 
— A  foreigner  on  English  drinking  habits — Irish  intemperance — 
The  craving  for  drink — False  ideas — Wales — Methodism  and 
temperance — Carew's  testimony — Conclusion. 

PLACES  are  like  faces — a  first  sight  is  almost 
invariably  the  one  that  tells  you  most.  When 
the  first  sharp,  clear  impression  has  grown 
blurred,  or  is  half  forgotten  or  overlaid  with  sub- 
sequent impressions,  we  have  as  a  rule  lost  more  than 
we  have  gained  :  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  in  a 
majority  of  instances  that  the  more  familiar  a  place 
becomes  to  us  the  less  well  we  know  it.  At  all  events 
we  have  ceased  to  know  it  in  the  same  way  ;  we  no 
longer  vividly,  consciously,  see  it  in  its  distinctive 
character. 


121 

*  * . 


122  THE   LAND'S   END 

Here  it  must  be  explained  that  by  "  place  "  several 
things  are  meant — the  appearance  of  the  buildings,  if 
it  be  a  town  or  village  ;  its  scenery  and  physical  con- 
ditions generally  ;  and,  finally,  its  inhabitants,  their 
physique,  dress,  speech  and  character. 

Now  that  I  know  Penzance  fairly  well,  having 
visited  it  a  dozen  or  twenty  times,  occasionally  stay- 
ing a  week  or  longer  in  it,  I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  go 
back  to  my  very  first  impression,  which,  fortunately, 
I  did  not  leave  wholly  to  memory. 

The  first  visit  was  on  a  Tuesday,  which  is  market 
day  in  Penzance,  always  the  best  day  on  which  to  visit 
a  country  town  if  one  is  interested  in  the  people  and 
their  domestic  animals.  Although  in  midwinter,  the 
day  was  exceptionally  mild  and  very  fine,  and  arriving 
early,  I  spent  some  hours  in  strolling  about  the 
streets,  peeping  into  the  churches,  and  visiting  the 
public  gardens,  the  sea-front  and  cattle -market. 
The  town  itself,  despite  its  fine  situation  on  Mount's 
Bay,  with  the  famous  castle  on  the  island  hill,  opposite 
Marazion,  on  one  hand  and  the  bold  coast  scenery 
by  Newlyn  and  Mousehole  on  the  other,  interested 
me  as  little  as  any  country  town  I  have  seen.  Streets 
narrow  and  others  narrower  still,  some  straight,  some 
very  crooked,  with  houses  on  either  side,  mostly 
modern,  all  more  or  less  mean  or  commonplace  in 
appearance.  The  market,  too,  was  curiously  mean, 
and  the  animals  poor  ;  it  was  a  surprise  to  see  such 
cattle  in  a  district  which  is  chiefly  dependent  on  dairy 
produce.  The  cows  were  small,  mostly  lean  and  all 
in  an  incredibly  rough  and  dirty  condition,  their 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        123 

haunches,  and  in  many  instances  half  their  coats, 
covered  with  an  old  crust  of  indurated  mud  and 
dung.  The  farmers  do  nothing  to  improve  their 
cattle  and  are  not  only  satisfied  to  go  on  keeping 
these  small  beasts  of  no  particular  breed — a  red  and 
white  animal  which  looks  like  a  degenerated  Jersey — - 


l\  -? 


MARKET   JEW    STREET 

but  it  is  customary  to  allow  them  to  breed  a  year  too 
soon. 

This,  however,  is  not  a  question  to  dogmatise  about; 
one  would  certainly  wish  to  see  the  beasts  better  cared 
for  in  the  winter  months  and  brought  to  market  in  a 
less  filthy  state,  but  I  doubt  that  any  improved  breed 
would  flourish  in  the  conditions  in  which  these 
animals  exist  in  the  small  dairy  farms  on  the  stony 
moors  in  this  rough  unsheltered  district.  The  cow  of 
the  Land's  End  country  is,  in  some  degree,  a  product 


i24  THE   LAND'S   END 

of  the  place  and  in  harmony  with  its  environment,  like 
the  Land's  End  fox  and  badger. 

At  noon  the  market  was  over,  but  the  town  con- 
tinued full  of  people  until  long  after  dark,  the  main 
thoroughfare,  Market  Jew  Street,  and  one  or  two 
streets  adjoining,  being  thronged  with  farmer  folk 
and  people  from  the  villages  who  had  come  in  to  sell 
their  produce  and  do  their  shopping.  Carriers'  carts 
stood  in  rows  by  the  side  of  the  pavements,  and  as 
in  other  market  towns  each  had  brought  in  its  little 
cargo  of  humanity,  mostly  women  with  sun-browned 
faces,  all  in  that  rusty  respectable  dowdy  black  dress 
which  is  universal  in  rural  England  and  would  make 
an  ugly  object  of  any  woman  in  the  world.  Again, 
as  is  the  custom  in  market  towns,  the  thoroughfare 
was  the  place  where  the  people  congregated  to  meet 
and  converse  with  their  friends  and  relations.  This 
meeting  with  friends  appeared  to  be  a  principal  object 
of  a  visit  to  Penzance  on  market  day.  It  was  a  sort  of 
social  function,  and  the  longer  I  remained  in  the  street, 
sauntering  about,  watching  the  people  and  listening 
to  endless  dialogues,  the  more  I  was  interested.  Not 
only  was  this  the  healthiest-looking  crowd  I  had  ever 
seen  in  a  town,  without  a  sickly  or  degraded  face  in 
it,  but  it  was  undoubtedly  the  most  cheerful,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  most  sober.  The  liveliness  of  the 
crowd,  its  perpetual  flow  of  hilarious  talk,  its  meetings 
and  greetings  and  handshakings,  and  its  numerous 
little  groups  in  eager  good-humoured  discussion, 
made  me  very  watchful,  but  down  to  the  end  I  was 
unable  to  detect  the  slightest  sign  of  inebriety.  It 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        125 

was  a  new  and  curious  experience  to  find  myself  in  a 
considerable  gathering  of  rustics  who  had  succeeded 
in  getting  through  their  day  away  from  home  so 
pleasantly  without  the  aid  of  intoxicants. 

Some  of  the  town  police  I  conversed  with  on  the 
subject  during  the  day  assured  me  there  was  very 
little  drinking  going  on  ;  and  that  on  the  last  occasion 
of  the  great  annual  fair  of  Corpus  Christi,  which  lasts 
two  or  three  days,  when  the  people  of  all  the  country 
round  are  gathered  in  Penzance  and  a  good  deal  of 
merry-making  goes  on,  they  had  not  a  single  case  of 
drunkenness.  The  policemen,  abstainers  themselves 
they  informed  me,  believed  the  people  were  sober 
because  they  were  mostly  church  and  chapel  goers 
and  had  been  brought  up  to  regard  intemperance  as 
a  great  defect  in  a  man  and  a  great  sin. 

This  explanation  of  the  soberness  of  the  Cornish 
people,  especially  in  the  west  part,  is,  I  found,  the 
usual  one  :  it  is  short  and  easy  to  carry  about  in  the 
brain,  and  a  policeman  or  any  one  you  question  on 
the  point  is  as  ready  to  supply  you  with  it  as  he 
would  be  to  give  you  a  match  to  light  your  pipe. 
Religion  may  be  one  cause,  but  I  imagine  that  another 
and  a  much  more  important  one  is  to  be  traced  in  the 
character  of  this  people. 

I  here  recall  a  striking  explanation  of  the  drinking 
habit  in  England  given  me  by  an  independent  witness 
and  a  very  keen  observer.  He  was  an  Argentine  of 
an  old  native  family.  I  first  knew  him  as  a  young 
student ;  he  rose  afterwards  to  a  very  high  place  in 
the  government  of  his  country,  and  a  few  years  ago, 


126  THE   LAND'S   END 

while  on  a  visit  to  England,  he  looked  me  up  and  we 
renewed  our  old  friendship. 

His  idea  about  drinking  in  England  was  that  it  was 
indulged  in  to  remedy  a  defect  in  us,  a  certain  slow- 
ness or  dullness  of  thought  or  feeling  from  which  we 
desired  at  times  to  escape.  He  gave  the  following 
illustration.  Two  British  workmen,  old  friends,  meet 
by  chance  after  a  long  interval  and  clasp  hands 
delightedly  and  each  asks  the  other  how  he  is.  One 
says  "  Just  so  so  "  or  "  Pretty  well,"  the  other  says 
"  Mustn't  grumble."  They  appear,  then,  to  have 
got  to  the  end  of  their  powers  of  speech,  yet  are  con- 
scious that  there  is  more  to  be  said  if  they  are  ever 
to  get  back  into  the  old  comfortable  intimacy.  Sud- 
denly one  has  an  inspiration  and  proposes  a  drink. 
The  other  agrees  with  a  sense  of  relief,  and  they 
incontinently  repair  to  the  nearest  public,  where, 
after  a  glass  or  two,  what  they  desired  and  tried  to 
get  but  could  not  is  at  once  theirs  :  their  tongues 
are  loosed,  they  laugh  in  pure  joy  at  their  new-found 
freedom  and  ability  to  express  themselves  ;  they  talk 
of  their  work,  their  families,  of  a  hundred  things 
they  had  forgotten  but  remember  now,  and  are  glad 
to  feel  in  sympathy  with  each  other. 

Now,  he  continued,  we  of  another  race  and  dispo- 
sition in  our  country  when  we  meet  an  old  friend, 
although  it  may  not  be  very  long  since  we  last  saw 
him,  feel  no  such  restraint,  but  at  once  the  joy  of 
meeting  him  sets  us  off.  The  pleasure  is  stimulus 
enough  of  itself  ;  it  sends  the  blood  spinning  through 
our  brains,  and  we  are,  in  fact,  almost  intoxicated  by 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        127 

it.  To  take  alcohol  is  unnecessary,  and  would,  in- 
deed, be  very  foolish. 

So  far  my  Argentine  friend,  and  whether  he  was 
right  or  wrong  it  struck  me  at  Penzance  that  the 
naturally  lively  disposition  of  Cornishmen,  their 
quick  feeling  and  responsiveness,  was  the  chief  cause 
of  their  temperance  in  drink.  This  made  it  easy  for 
them  to  practise  temperance  ;  it  made  it  possible  for 
friend  to  meet  friend  and  spend  the  day  without  an 
artificial  aid  to  cheerfulness. 

It  is  true  that  the  Irish,  racially  related  to  the 
Cornish  and  resembling  them  in  disposition,  are  not 
a  sober  people  ;  on  this  point  I  will  only  venture  to 
suggest  that  their  love  of  whisky  and  ether  may 
not  result  from  the  same  cause  as  the  Anglo-Saxon's 
love  of  drink.  Probably  their  misery  has  got  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  it,  for  just  as  whisky  or  beer  will 
unfreeze  the  currents  of  the  soul  in  two  stolid  English 
friends  and  set  them  flowing  merrily,  so  in  men  of  all 
races  will  alcohol  lift  them  above  themselves  and  give 
them  a  brief  happiness. 

It  may  seem  odd  to  quote  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell 
in  this  connection,  but  I  find  in  a  recent  pronounce- 
ment of  his  a  curiously  apposite  remark  about 
drunkenness.  "  The  man,"  he  says,  cc  who  got  dead 
drunk  last  night  did  so  because  of  the  inspiration  in 
him  to  break  through  the  barriers  of  his  limitations, 
to  express  himself  and  realize  the  more  abundant 
life."  We  need  not  follow  him  any  further  in  his 
quaint  contention  that  sin  is,  after  all,  nothing  but  a 
spasmodic  effort  of  the  sinner  to  reach  to  or  capture 


128  THE   LAND'S   END 

higher  things — a  "quest  of  God"  as  he  curiously 
puts  it.  It  is  nothing  but  a  prolonged  and  somewhat 
shrill  echo  of  a  wiser  or  a  saner  man's  thoughts. 
"  The  sway  of  alcohol  over  mankind,"  says  Professor 
William  James  in  his  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience^ 
"  is  unquestionably  due  to  its  power  to  stimulate  the 
mystical  faculties  of  human  nature,  usually  crushed 
to  earth  by  the  cold  facts  and  dry  criticisms  of  the 
sober  hour.  Sobriety  diminishes,  discriminates  and 
says,  No  ;  drunkenness  expands,  unites  and  says, 
Yes.  ...  It  brings  its  votary  from  the  chill  peri- 
phery of  things  to  the  radiant  core.  It  makes  him 
for  the  moment  one  with  truth  ...  it  is  part  of  the 
deeper  mystery  and  tragedy  of  life  that  whiffs  and 
gleams  of  something  that  we  immediately  recognise 
as  excellent  should  be  vouchsafed  to  so  many  of  us 
only  in  the  fleeting  earlier  phases  of  what  in  its 
totality  is  so  degrading  a  poisoning." 

Mr.  Campbell's  striver  after  the  higher  life  who 
got  dead  drunk  last  night  is  brother  to  the  savage. 
It  is  stated  by  no  less  an  authority  on  the  drink  ques- 
tion than  Dr.  Archdall  Reid  that  there  is  in  man  a 
passion,  an  instinct,  for  alcohol,  and  that  the  savage 
has  a  craving  for  drink.  There  is  no  such  craving. 
The  natural  happiness  of  the  savage,  as  I  know  him, 
is  in  hunting  and  fighting  ;  and  in  the  intervals  of 
those  stirring  pursuits  he  has  a  somewhat  dull, 
lethargic  existence.  Alcohol  produces  the  state  of 
mind  he  is  in  when  occupied  with  the  chase  or  in 
raiding  and  fighting.  It  is  a  joyful  excitement,  a 
short  cut  to  happiness  and  glory  which  he  will  take 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        129 

at  every  opportunity.  They  will  even  sell  their 
weapons  and  the  skins  that  cover  them  for  a  little  of 
this  happiness  ;  but  when  there  is  no  more  of  it  to 
be  had  they  return  to  their  normal  life,  and  think  no 
more  about  it  unless  the  poison  has  permanently 
or  very  seriously  injured  them.  One  effect  on  the 
poisoned  man,  savage  or  civilised,  is  that  "craving", 
or  mad  thirst,  with  which,  Dr.  Reid  imagines,  Nature 
has  cursed  her  human  children. 

We  have  now  got  a  good  distance  away  from  the 
subject  we  started  with  ;  but  I  have  no  intention  of 
returning  to  Penzance.  That  town  interested  me 
solely  as  a  place  where  Cornishmen  may  be  seen  and 
studied.  To  go  back  a  little  further  in  time  to  my 
first  impressions  of  Cornwall,  I  was  struck,  as  most 
persons  are  on  a  first  visit,  with  its  unlikeness  to  other 
parts  of  England.  You  find  the  unlikeness,  not 
only  in  the  aspect  of  the  country,  but  in  the  people 
too  ;  you  would  hardly  feel  that  you  had  gone  so  far 
from  the  England  you  know  if  you  had  crossed  the 
Atlantic.  The  differences  are  many  and  great,  but  in 
this  chapter  I  am  concerned  with  only  one — the 
greater  temperance  of  the  people  :  indeed,  my  im- 
pression of  Penzance  was  given  mainly  to  serve  as  an 
introduction  to  this  subject.  It  is  a  very  important 
one.  Our  judges  and  magistrates  are  always  telling 
us  that  most  of  the  crimes  committed  in  this  country 
are  due  to  drink.  The  case  of  Cornwall  certainly 
favours  that  view :  it  is,  if  the  statistics  are  accepted  as 
showing  the  true  state  of  things,  the  most  sober  and  has 
the  cleanest  record  in  the  land.  The  Devonians  are 


130  THE   LAND'S   END 

not  a  vicious  people  ;  they  compare  well  enough  with 
most  counties,  and  they  are  next-door  neighbours  to 
the  Cornish  ;  yet  the  indictable  offences  in  Devon  are 
about  double  per  thousand  of  the  population  to  those 
of  Cornwall.  What  is  the  reason  of  this  ?  Why  are 
the  Cornish  more  temperate  than  others  ? 

I  am  sorry  I  ever  wasted  an  hour  over  a  book  on 
Cornwall  with  the  idea  that  it  would  be  helpful  to  me. 
The  time  would  have  been  more  profitably  spent  if  I 
had  stood  with  my  hands  in  my  pockets  watching  a 
sparrow  carry  up  straws  to  its  nesting-hole  under  the 
eaves  ;  or,  better  still,  if  I  had  talked  to  a  child  or  an 
old  man  in  some  village  street.  To  read  is  to  imbibe 
false  ideas,  and  in  the  end,  if  you  are  capable  of 
observing  for  yourself  and  care  anything  about  the 
matter,  you  are  put  to  the  trouble  of  ridding  yourself 
of  them. 

When  the  Penzance  policemen — abstainers  and  reli- 
gious men  themselves — gave  me  a  reason  for  the 
people's  soberness  they  were  telling  me  what  they  had 
been  taught,  and  I  accepted  it  as  probably  true.  1  too 
had  read  that  statement  and  here  was  a  confirmation 
of  it !  It  is  a  great  satisfaction,  a  relief,  to  have  our 
problems  solved  for  us.  Blessings  on  the  man  who 
runs  out  before  us  to  remove  some  obstacle  from  the 
path  ! 

But  the  relief  was  not  for  long  :  doubts  began  to 
assail  me.  What  the  good  policemen  had  said  was 
what  the  Methodists  have  been  saying  in  their  writ- 
ings these  hundred  years  or  longer  :  they  are  saying 
it  now,  all  the  time,  and  believe  it  because  it  flatters 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        131 

them,  and  poor  weak  humanity  is  ever  credulous  of  a 
flattering  falsehood. 

One  day,  a  few  miles  from  Penzance,  I  met  a  young 
coastguardsman  and  had  a  nice  long  talk  with  him,  in 
the  course  of  which  he  gave  me  his  impression  of  the 
country.  For  he  was  not  a  native  and  had  not  long 
been  in  Cornwall  ;  he  came  from  South  Wales  where 
he  had  been  stationed  two  or  three  years.  The  people 
of  that  place — I  will  not  mention  the  locality — were, 
he  said,  horrible  to  live  with,  degraded  and  brutish 
beyond  what  he  could  have  imagined  possible  in  any 
civilised  country.  They  were  drunkards,  fighters, 
dreadfully  profane,  and  as  to  lechery — called  immoral- 
ity in  the  journals  and  blue-books — no  woman  could 
go  out  after  dark,  or  by  day  into  any  lonely  place, 
without  danger  of  assault.  The  change  to  West 
Cornwall  was  so  great  that  for  several  weeks  he  could 
not  realise  it  ;  he  could  not  believe  that  the  people 
were  all  sober  and  decent  and  friendly  in  disposition 
as  he  had  been  assured.  When  he  spied  a  man 
coming  along  the  road  his  impulse  was  to  lower  his 
eyes  or  turn  his  face  away  to  avoid  seeing  a  brutalised 
countenance.  He  always  expected  to  hear  some  ob- 
scene expression  or  a  torrent  of  profanity  from  every 
stranger  he  met.  Even  now,  after  some  months  in 
this  new  clean  land,  he  had  not  grown  quite  accus- 
tomed to  regard  every  one,  stranger  or  not,  as  a  being 
just  like  himself,  one  he  could  freely  address  and  feel 
sure  of  receiving  friendly  pleasant  words  in  return. 

It  was  interesting  to  hear  the  coastguardsman's 
story  because  of  his  feelings  in  the  matter  and  what 


132  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  change  to  Cornwall  meant  to  him.  That  he  was 
right  in  his  facts  we  know.  We  know,  for  instance, 
that  just  as  Cornwall  is  the  cleanest  county,  so 
some  of  the  Welsh  counties — especially  in  the  coal- 
mining districts — are  tht  foulest.  Yet  the  Welsh 
are  Celts  too  and  Methodists  of  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  standing  !  They  are,  in  fact,  the  truer 
Methodists  if  we  consider  what  that  creed  is  and  that 
its  most  essential  point  is  that  there  can  be  no  salva- 
tion without  a  sudden  conversion,  with  or  without 
the  accompaniment  of  groanings,  shriekings,  and 
other  manifestations  of  the  kind.  But  what  are  the 
facts  of  the  case  as  to  the  condition  of  Cornwall, 
with  regard  to  drunkenness,  before  its  conversion  to 
Methodism  ?  They  are  not  so  easily  got  as  one  may 
think.  There  is  plenty  of  material,  and  any  one 
with  a  preconceived  opinion  on  the  question  would 
doubtless  find  something  to  confirm  him  in  it.  I 
had  no  opinion,  and  my  sole  desire  was  to  find  out 
the  truth.  My  first  superficial  study  of  the  question 
made  me  a  believer  in  the  claim  made  by  the  Meth- 
odists, but  it  did  not  bear  a  closer  investigation. 
What  I  found  was  that  when  tin-mining  was  in  a 
highly  prosperous  state  and  the  population  of  the 
mining  centres  vastly  greater  than  it  is  now  there  was 
a  good  deal  of  intemperance  among  the  miners  ;  but 
there  is  nothing  to  show  that  they  were  as  degraded 
as  the  Welsh  of  to-day.  It  is  also  indisputable  that 
Wesley's  preaching  had  a  profound  effect  on  the  tin- 
miners.  That  is  the  most  that  can  be  said.  That 
the  Methodism  invented  after  Wesley's  death  and 


IMPRESSIONS   OF   PENZANCE        133 

imposed  on  his  followers  in  his  name — the  name  of 
one  who  abhorred  Dissent — is  the  cause  of  the  tem- 
perance of  the  Cornish  people  generally  there  is  no 
evidence  to  show,  and  no  reason  to  believe.  On  the 
contrary  there  is  very  good  reason  for  disbelief. 

The  Cornish  people  are  incomparably  better  off 
now,  so  far  as  material  comforts  go,  than  they  were  in 
the  last  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  Richard 
Carew  wrote  his  Survey  of  Cornwall ;  but  there  have 
been  no  really  great,  no  radical  changes — no  trans- 
formations, as  in  so  many  other  parts  of  Britain. 
The  life  of  to-day  is  very  much  like  the  old  life,  and 
the  people  now  are  like  their  forefathers  of  three 
centuries  ago  as  described  by  Carew.  He  pointed 
out  that  the  tin-mines  were  a  great  evil — the  curse  of 
Cornwall,  since  it  was  impossible  for  the  miners  to 
escape  the  abominable  temptations  to  drink  which 
were  thrust  in  their  way.  Every  second  house  was  a 
drinking-place,  into  which  the  poor  wretches  were 
enticed  to  waste  their  earnings,  with  the  result  that 
their  families  were  in  a  chronic  state  of  want.  But 
the  rural  population  were  in  a  very  different  case  ; 
those  who  worked  on  the  land  were  indeed  poor, 
fared  coarsely,  dressed  meanly  and  wore  no  shoes, 
but  they  were  sober  and  industrious  and  lived  in 
decent  homes,  and  their  wives  and  children  were 
properly  fed  and  clothed  ;  so  that  in  the  end  they 
were  far  better  off  and  happier  than  the  workers  in 
the  mines. 

So  we  arrive   at   the   conclusion   that  the  Cornish 
people    are    not,  and    never  have    been,  intemperate 


i34  THE   LAND'S   END 

generally  ;  for  one  reason,  because  they  are  of  a 
singularly  happy  disposition,  lively  and  sociable,  with 
a  very  intense  love  of  their  families  and  homes  ;  and, 
secondly,  because  of  the  idyllic  conditions  in  which 
they  exist,  and  always  have  existed,  in  a  country 
thinly  populated,  without  big  towns,  with  the 
healthiest,  most  equable  and  genial  climate  in 
Britain  ;  and,  best  of  all,  isolated,  outside  of  and 
remote  from  civilisation  with  its  feverish  restlessness, 
vices  and  dreadful  problems. 


CHAPTER   XI 
MANNERS    AND    MORALS 

Carew's  Survey  of  Cornwall — Books  on  Cornwall — Excessive  praise 
and  dispraise — Saxon  and  Celt — Charge  of  insincerity — "One- 
and-all"  spirit — Dishonesty — Untruthfulness — An  Englishman's 
view  of  the  Welsh — The  question  of  immorality — Cruelty  to  animals 
— Offences  unpunished — Cornish  civilisation  a  "veneer" — Wreck- 
ing and  what  it  means — Sunday  observance — Cornish  and  English 
consistency — Englishmen  who  understand. 

cc     A  FTER    having    marched    over    the   land,    and 

h\^  waded  through   the   sea,  to  describe  all  the 

creatures  therein,  insensible  and  sensible,  the 

course    of    method    summoneth   me   to  discourse  of 

the  reasonable,  to  wit,  the  inhabitants." 

Thus  said  Richard  Carew  in  his  Suwey  of  Cornwall^ 
written  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  I  have 
no  course  of  method,  nor  any  order  in  which  to 
record  these  impressions  of  rocks  and  waters  and 
birds  and  flowers,  or  any  other  thing,  insensible  or 


136  THE   LAND'S   END 

sensible  ;  but  now,  after  having  written  one  entire 
long  chapter  on  the  soberness  of  the  Cornish  people, 
explaining  the  causes,  as  I  conceive  them,  of  this 
peculiar  state,  I  think  it  may  be  just  as  well  to  go  on 
about  the  reasonable,  to  wit  the  inhabitants,  and 
endeavour  to  get  a  little  nearer  to  a  proper  under- 
standing of  them.  And  here  I  must  modify  what  I 
said  in  my  haste  about  the  worthlessness  (to  me) 
of  all  books  on  Cornwall,  protesting  that  my  time 
would  have  been  better  spent  in  listening  to  the  chir- 
ruping of  a  cock  sparrow  than  in  reading  them. 
Carew's  book  is  a  notable  exception,  pleasant  and 
profitable  to  read  after  three  centuries,  and,  if  we 
exclude  living  authors,  it  may  be  described  as  the  one 
very  good  book  ever  written  by  a  Cornishman. 

Having  said  so  much  it  strikes  me  as  an  odd  fact 
that  the  boast  Carew  made  about  his  important  and 
long-living  book — that  it  was  his  very  own,  or,  to  use 
his  more  picturesque  expression,  that  he  gathered  the 
sticks  for  the  building  of  his  poor  nest — I,  too,  can 
make  of  this  unimportant  work  which  may  not  have 
more  years  of  life  than  the  Survey  has  had  centuries. 

For  impressions  of  nature  one  goes  to  nature — the 
visible  world  which  lies  open  before  us  ;  but  when  it 
comes  to  that  other  nature  of  the  human  heart,  half- 
hidden  in  clouds  and  mist  and  half-revealed  in  gleams 
of  the  sun,  one  modestly  looks  to  others  for  guidance 
and  to  the  books  which  have  been  written  in  the 
past.  And  of  books  there  are  plenty — histories, 
topographies,  guides,  hand-books,  tours,  travels,  itin- 
eraries, journeys  and  journals,  wherein  are  many  useful 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS  137 

facts  originally  collected  very  long  ago  and  carried  on 
from  book  to  book — facts  about  the  pilchard  fishery, 
tin  and  tin  -  mining,  geology  and  natural  history, 
Cornish  crosses  and  cromlechs  with  other  antiquities  ; 
also  legends  of  saints  and  giants  and  the  happenings 
of  a  thousand  years  ago.  But  about  the  reasonable, 
to  wit  the  inhabitants,  next  to  nothing,  and  that  very 
little  as  a  rule  misleading.  It  is  mostly  of  a  flattering 
description. 

It  is  indeed  curious  to  note  that  while  those  who 
have  written  on  the  Cornish  people  almost  invariably 
say  the  pleasantest  things  about  them,  the  English,  or 
Anglo-Saxons,  who  live  among  them,  the  strangers 
who  reside  permanently  or  for  long  periods  within 
their  gates,  have  a  very  different  opinion.  The 
praise  and  the  dispraise  to  my  mind  are  equally  far 
from  the  truth  ;  moreover,  it  is  not  difficult  to  dis- 
cover the  reason  of  such  widely  divergent  opinions. 
Those  who  visit  the  land  to  write  a  book  about  it,  or 
for  some  other  purpose,  but  do  not  remain  long 
enough  to  know  anything  properly,  are  charmed  and 
misled  by  the  exceedingly  friendly  and  pleasant  de- 
meanour towards  strangers  which  is  almost  universal, 
seeing  in  it  only  the  outward  expression  of  divers 
delightful  qualities.  Those  who  live  with  the  people, 
if  they  happen  to  be  Saxons,  discover  that  the  friend- 
liness is  a  manner,  that  when  you  penetrate  beneath  it 
you  come  upon  a  character  wholly  un-Saxon,  there- 
fore of  a  wrong  description  or  an  inferior  quality. 
For  it  is  a  fact  that  the  Englishman  is  endowed  with 
a  very  great  idea  of  himself,  of  the  absolute  Tightness 


138  THE   LAND'S   END 

of  his  philosophy  of  life,  his  instincts,  prepossessions, 
and  the  peculiar  shape  and  shade  of  his  morality. 
He  is,  so  to  speak,  his  own  standard,  and  measures 
everybody  from  China  to  Peru  by  it,  and  those  who 
fall  short  of  it,  who  have  a  somewhat  different  code 
or  ideal,  are  of  the  meaner  sort  of  men  which  one 
expects  to  find  outside  of  these  islands.  It  is  un- 
doubtedly a  noble  state  of  mind,  befitting  a  world- 
conquering  people,  and  has  served  to  make  us 
respected,  feared  and  even  disliked  in  other  coun- 
tries, but  some  small  disadvantages  and  some  friction 
result  from  it  at  home,  and  one  is  that  the  lord  of 
human  kind  residing  among  inferior  Celts  finds 
himself  out  of  harmony  with  the  people  about  him. 
He  is  not  as  a  rule  quick,  but  after  a  few  months  or 
years  in  a  place  he  begins  to  find  his  neighbours  out, 
and  they  on  their  side  are  not  insensible  of  the  change 
in  his  regard.  He  sees  that  they  have  faults  and 
vices  which  being  unlike  those  of  the  English  he 
finds  it  hard  to  tolerate.  Not  only  does  he  disapprove 
of  them  on  this  account  but  he  resents  having  been 
taken  in.  "  You  are  charmed  with  this  people,  you  tell 
me  !  Wait  till  you  have  lived  years  with  them  as  I 
have  done  and  know  them  as  I  do,  then  give  me  your 
opinion,"  they  are  accustomed  to  say  in  their  bitterness 
— the  feeling  which  cannot  but  make  a  man  unjust. 

It  is  not  easy  or  not  pleasant  to  descend  to  particu- 
lars, but  having  gone  so  far  as  to  state  the  question  it 
would  hardly  be  fair  not  to  go  further,  although  by 
so  doing  I  shall  most  probably  incur  the  displeasure 
of  both  sides. 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS  139 

A  common  charge  against  the  Cornish  is  a  want  of 
solidity  or  stability  of  character.  You  cannot  rely  on 
them.  You  are  constantly  deceived  by  their  manner  : 
they  are  the  readiest  of  any  people  on  earth  to  fall 
in  with  your  views  and  do  exactly  what  you  want. 
But  they  don't  do  it.  You  may  waste  years  or  indeed 
your  whole  life  in  striving  to  make  them  see  things  in 
your  better  way,  and  give  them  every  instruction  and 
make  them  understand  (for  they  are  not  stupid)  how 
much  more  may  be  done  by  following  an  improved 
method,  and  you  will  always  be  brought  back  to  the 
same  old  We  dont  belong  to  do  it  that  way,  and  after  a 
hundred  or  a  thousand  trials  you  give  it  up  in  despair. 
Or  you  may  take  your  defeat  philosophically  (with  a 
little  added  wormwood)  and  say  that  although  they 
are  not  stupid,  their  intelligence,  like  that  of  the 
lower  animals,  is  non-progressive. 

Then  as  to  the  one-and-all  spirit.  This,  I  am 
assured  on  all  hands,  is  the  veriest  fiction,  or  at  all 
events  it  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  what  it  is 
usually  supposed  to  be.  The  members  of  each  little 
community  are  as  a  fact  more  unfriendly  and  spiteful 
towards  one  another  than  is  the  case  in  an  English 
village  :  they  are  one  only  when  they  make  a  com- 
bined attack  on  some  person  who  has  been  so  unfor- 
tunate as  to  offend  everybody  at  the  same  time.  So 
envious  are  they  that  every  one  hates  to  see  any  bene- 
fit or  gift  bestowed  on  another.  You  must  treat  all 
alike  ;  you  may  not  give  a  hundred  of  coals  to  the 
poorest,  most  suffering  old  woman  without  exciting 
general  ill-will,  unless  you  are  prepared  to  give  as 


140  THE   LAND'S   END 

much  to  every  other  old  woman  in  the  parish.  They 
would  rather  the  old  creature  should  be  left  to  shiver 
in  a  tireless  room.  Nor  must  you  speak  in  praise  of 
another  :  do  not  say  to  Mrs.  Trevenna,  what  a  nice, 
or  what  a  well-behaved,  or  pretty,  or  attractive  child 
that  is  of  your  sister  cr  friend  or  neighbour,  Mrs. 
Trevasgis,  if  you  do  not  want  to  set  the  Trevenna 
tongue  wagging  against  both  you  and  the  Trevasgis 
woman. 

These  little  uncharitablenesses — to  describe  them 
all  in  one  word — are  universal  in  man  or  woman, 
perhaps  in  both,  and  being  part  of  our  nature  they 
probably  have  their  uses  :  if  they  strike  us  more  in 
the  Cornish  than  in  our  own  people  it  is  because  of 
the  difference  of  temperament  or  disposition — because 
their  feelings,  good  or  bad,  are  more  readily  excited 
and  are  expressed  with  less  restraint. 

That  they  are  not  truthful  and  not  honest  is  another 
count  in  the  long  indictment.  With  regard  to  honesty 
it  is  one  I  always  hear  with  surprise  ;  for  can  it  be 
said  that  we  are  as  a  people  honest  ?  Consider  the 
one  matter  of  our  food  and  drink — the  amount  of 
legislation  we  have  found  necessary  on  the  subject, 
the  cost  to  the  country  of  maintaining  a  vast  army 
of  inspectors  and  analysts  to  prevent  us  from  poison- 
ing each  other  for  the  sake  of  a  small  extra  gain  ! 
Would  any  one  in  England  give  me  for  love  or  money 
a  glass  of  milk  or  beer,  or  a  slice  of  bread  and  butter, 
which  would  not  seriously  injure  my  health  but  for 
the  fear  of  the  law  ?  And  after  all  we  have  done  to 
protect  ourselves  we  are  assured  every  day  by  the 


MANNERS    AND    MORALS  141 

experts  that  we  are  living  in  a  fool's  paradise  seeing 
that  dishonesty  is  so  ingrained  in  us  that  it  will  always 
find  out  a  way  to  defeat  our  best  efforts. 

This  charge  may  then  be  dropped — for  the  present 
at  all  events.  When  our  moral  condition  has  been 
properly  examined  and  reported  on  by  travellers  and 
missionaries  from  Thibet  or  some  undiscovered  country 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Mountains  of  the  Moon  we 
may  be  in  a  position  to  affirm  that  Cornwall  is  not  as 
honest  as,  say,  Middlesex. 

But  if  honesty  is  or  ought  to  be  a  painful  subject, 
perhaps  in  discussing  the  question  of  truthfulness 
we  shall  be  able  to  make  out  a  better  case  and  recover 
our  self-esteem.  Here  we  have  it  as  it  is  stated  by 
one  of  my  correspondents  :  "  However  bad  the 
English  commercial  morality  may  be,  the  average 
Englishman's  word  still  stands  for  something.  When 
he  lies  he  does  so  deliberately  for  some  important 
purpose.  Some  other  races,  including  the  Celts, 
appear  to  have  a  different  perception  of  truth,  and  to 
lie,  as  children  do,  readily  and  gracefully,  because 
lies  and  exaggerations  are  more  interesting  and  agree- 
able than  plain  truth.  A  difference  of  temperament  : 
the  Englishman  may  be  better  or  worse,  but  he  knows 
where  he  is  and  resents  being  fooled." 

This  reminds  me  of  the  experience  of  a  young 
friend  of  mine,  a  pure  Englishman,  exceptionally 
intelligent,  and  so  sympathetic  and  adaptive  that  he 
is  happy  with  all  sorts  of  people  and  they  with  him. 
From  boyhood  he  has  lived  in  Wales,  a  somewhat 
rambling  life,  in  towns,  villages  and  farm-houses, 


142  THE   LAND'S   END 

and  his  playmates,  fellow-students  and  companions 
have  been  natives.  Yet  he  assures  me  that  he  has 
never  been  able  to  feel  himself  one  of  them,  and 
never  been  able  to  see  anything  eye  to  eye  with  even 
his  most  intimate  and  dearest  friends  of  that  race. 
It  all  seems  to  come  to  an  ineradicable  difference  of 
mind  in  the  two  races.  There  is  no  better  and  no 
worse,  and  the  only  quarrel  is  when  any  one,  Saxon  or 
Celt,  is  offended  at  another's  inability  to  see  eye  to 
eye  with  him,  regarding  it  as  a  bad  habit  which  ought 
to  be  overcome,  or  a  sheer  piece  of  perversity  on  his 
part. 

Then  we  have  the  complicated  question  of  morality, 
or  rather  of  "immorality,"  by  which  some  journalists, 
authors  and  compilers  of  blue-books  mean  sexual 
intercourse  unsanctified  by  marriage.  Norden,  who 
wrote  nigh  on  three  centuries  before  the  nice  modern 
mind  invented  a  new  meaning  for  an  old  word, 
described  it  as  the  "  sweet  synn  "  which  was  regarded 
as  venial  in  Cornwall.  But  Norden  spoke  of  the 
gentry  ;  the  manners  and  morals  of  what  he  described 
as  the  "  baser  sort  of  men,"  including  rustics,  miners, 
mechanics,  farmers  and  yeomen,  did  not  interest  his 
lofty  mind.  But  the  sweet  sin  was  also  common 
among  Norden's  "  baser  sort  of  men,"  and  exists 
to-day  as  it  did  in  the  past,  and  as  it  exists  in  the 
Principality,  and  perhaps  in  Ireland,  where  the  power 
and  vigilance  of  the  priests  are  now  able  to  keep  it 
dark.  It  is  really  not  so  much  a  vice  as  a  custom  of 
the  country,  perhaps  of  the  race,  seeing  that  the  illicit 
intercourse  usually  ends  in  marriage.  It  has  been 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS 

said  that  in  Cornwall  matrimony  is  the  result  of 
maternity.  For  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  1  am 
speaking  only  of  Cornwall.  We  have  seen  in  the 


AU.C 


•** 


MOUSEHOLE 


last  chapter  how  it  is  in  Wales,  in  some  of  the  mining 
districts  ;  but  these  bestial  developments  are  not 
known  and  have  probably  never  existed  in  the 
duchy.  It  is  true  that  some  poor  women  are  left  to 


i44  THE   LAND'S    END 

bear  their  burden  alone,  and  that  their  frail  sisters  who 
have  had  better  fortune  are  as  ready  as  others  to 
persecute  them,  but  the  proportion  of  these  un- 
happy ones  is  really  less  than  in  very  many  English 
villages. 

It  is  of  the  villages  and  small  towns  I  speak  :  the 
towns  are  mostly  very  small  ;  but  as  population  in- 
creases with  the  revival  of  the  mining  industry  (the 
curse  of  the  country  "  from  ancientie ")  the  extra- 
ordinary liberty  which  young  women  are  allowed,  or 
have  taken  for  themselves,  and  their  pleasant  ways 
with  men  may  result  in  a  troublesome  problem  in 
the  larger  centres. 

It  is  said  of  the  Cornish,  as  it  has  been  said  of  the 
Irish  and  of  Celtic  people  generally,  that  they  are 
cruel.  I  doubt  if  they  are  more  cruel  than  others  if 
we  restrict  the  word  to  its  proper  meaning — the 
infliction  of  pain  for  the  pleasure  of  it ;  but  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  barbarity  of  the  kind  one  sees  in 
Spanish  and  Italian  countries  which  results  from 
temper.  The  Cornish,  like  the  Spanish,  are  passion- 
ate and  when  anything  goes  wrong  they  are  apt  to 
wreak  their  fury  on  the  poor  unresisting  beast — cow, 
calf,  horse,  donkey  or  sheep.  I  have  witnessed  many 
shocking  acts  of  this  kind  which  it  would  be  too 
painful  to  me  to  have  to  describe,  and  in  discussing 
this  subject  with  others,  some  of  them  Cornishmen 
who  naturally  love  their  people  and  are  anxious  to  see 
them  in  the  most  favourable  light,  they  have  confessed 
to  me  that  this  kind  of  brutality  is  very  common  ;  that 
it  is  the  greatest  blot  on  the  Cornishman's  character  and 


MANNERS   AND   MORALS  145 

a  constant  cause  of  pain  to  persons  of  a  humane  dis- 
position. What  to  me  makes  it  peculiarly  painful  is 
the  knowledge  that  the  man  I  have  witnessed  horribly 
ill-treating  some  patient  dumb  beast,  and  hated  and 
wished  that  I  had  had  the  power  to  annihilate  him — 
this  very  man,  his  fit  of  fury  over,  would  prove  him- 
self a  genuine  Cornishman,  a  very  pleasant  fellow, 
temperate,  religious,  hospitable,  a  good  husband, 
devoted  to  his  children. 

Celtic  cruelty,  Tennyson  said,  was  due  to  want 
of  imagination.  He  was  speaking  of  the  Irish,  who 
are  not  supposed  to  be  without  that  faculty.  Whether 
or  not  the  Cornish  have  it  is  another  question,  but  it 
may  be  that  Celtic  cruelty,  like  the  Spanish,  is  due 
rather  to  a  drop  of  black  blood  in  the  heart — an  ancient 
latent  ferocity  which  comes  out  in  moments  of  passion. 

The  fact  that  prosecutions  for  cruelty  to  animals 
are  so  rare — one  case,  I  should  say,  in  about  every 
five  thousand  getting  into  court — reminds  me  here 
of  another  charge  brought  against  the  Cornish  by 
the  strangers  within  their  gates.  If  Cornwall,  the 
critics  say,  is  able  to  show  the  cleanest  record  in 
England  it  is  because  the  law-breakers  are  not  treated 
as  in  other  counties.  Offences  are  winked  at  or  over- 
looked by  the  police  in  many  instances,  and  when  a 
prosecution  takes  place  magistrates  will  not  convict 
if  they  can  possibly  help  it.  Not  only  are  they  too 
tolerant  and  hate  to  hurt  one  of  their  own  people, 
but  they  think  of  themselves,  of  their  own  material 
interests,  and  are  anxious  above  all  things  that  their 
county  should  maintain  its  nice  reputation. 


146  THE   LAND'S   END 

Something  more  will  have  to  be  said  on  the  subject 
of  cruelty  to  animals  in  another  chapter  about  wild 
birds  during  severe  weather.  At  present,  to  conclude 
this  chapter,  we  have  to  consider  another  matter  which 
is  that  of  the  gravest  charge  of  all  and  is  indicated  in 
the  following  words  spoken  to  me  by  a  professional 
man,  a  resident  in  West  Cornwall.  "  I  have  lived 
and  worked  for  twenty  years  among  this  people  and 
have  long  lost  the  last  vestige  of  respect  and  affection 
I  once  had  for  them.  They  are  at  heart  what  their 
forefathers  were  ;  their  religion,  softer  manners  and 
apparent  friendliness  to  strangers,  is  all  on  the  surface 
— a  veneer.  The  old  barbarism  lives  and  burns  under 
it,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  watch  kept  on  them  and 
the  altered  conditions  generally  they  would  go  gladly 
back  to  the  ancient  trade  of  wrecking." 

This  spontaneous  outburst  on  the  part  of  a  person 
occupying  an  important  position  in  the  community 
made  me  curious  to  know  more  about  the  man  him- 
self. He  was  in  a  sense  a  good  man,  a  generous 
giver  according  to  his  means,  and  as  he  gave  secretly 
even  those  who  hated  him  (because  they  knew,  I 
imagine,  that  he  despised  and  hated  them)  were  never 
unwilling  to  go  to  him  for  help  when  they  required 
it.  But  he  was  by  nature  an  alien,  one  of  those 
downright  uncompromising  Saxons  who  cannot  get 
on  with  those  of  a  different  and  in  some  things 
antagonistic  race.  He  had  tried  his  best  to  bridge 
the  gulf  over.  His  ambition  had  been  to  make  him- 
self the  most  loved  man  in  the  place  and  naturally  his 
signal  failure  had  embittered  him. 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS  147 

But  what  about  the  charge  ?  Was  there  a  particle 
of  truth  in  it?  And,  finally,  what  is  meant  by 
wrecking? 

I  take  it  that  two  distinct  things  are  meant — one  a 
very  black  crime  indeed,  the  other  nothing  worse  than 
a  disregard  of  regulations  and  petty  pilfering.  With 
regard  to  the  first  it  is  believed  from  certain  stories 
and  traditions  which  have  come  down  to  us,  the 
origin  of  which  is  lost  in  the  mists  of  antiquity,  that 
the  natives  of  the  dangerous  parts  of  the  coast  made 
it  a  custom  to  lure  vessels  on  to  the  rocks  to  their 
destruction  by  displaying  false  lights.  This  may  be 
true  :  we  know  that  the  various  races  and  tribes  com- 
posing the  nation — Celts  and  Saxons,  Danes  and 
Normans — vied  with  each  other  in  every  form  of 
atrocity  and  of  cruelty  ;  but  no  instance  of  the  crime 
in  question  can  be  authenticated  as  having  taken 
place  in  recent  times.  Nevertheless  the  belief  is 
cherished  and  kept  alive  in  books,  mainly  religious 
tales  and  novels,  that  this  frightful  custom  continued 
down  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  when 
Wesley  appeared  to  convert  the  Cornish  people  from 
their  vicious  ways  and  all  kinds  of  wickedness,  in- 
cluding that  of  deliberately  wrecking  vessels  and 
murdering  the  unhappy  wretches  who  succeeded  in 
escaping  from  the  fury  of  the  waves.  As  the  books 
containing  these  veracious  statements,  so  flattering  to 
the  Cornish,  are  exceedingly  popular  in  the  Duchy 
and  nowhere  out  of  it,  the  Cornish  people  are  them- 
selves responsible  for  keeping  these  fables  alive. 

As  for  the  other  lesser  crime  or  offence,  I  fancy 


148  THE   LAND'S   END 

that  it  is  not  one  an  Englishman  can  look  on  as  a 
very  serious  matter. 

I  was  one  day  discussing  the  Sunday  observance 
question  with  an  English  clergyman  whose  parish  lies 
on  the  Cornish  coast,  and  related  the  following  incident 
to  him.  I  was  lodging  with  an  intelligent  and  well-to- 
do  artisan  and  his  wife  in  a  Somerset  village  when  one 
Sunday  morning,  the  weather  being  very  fine,  my 
host,  finding  that  I  was  not  going  to  church,  asked  me 
if  I  would  take  a  walk  with  him  as  he  wished  to  show 
me  some  nice  spots  in  the  neighbouring  woods  and 
copses  where  he  was  accustomed  to  go.  The  woods 
were  certainly  very  beautiful,  with  green  open  spaces 
and  a  fine  stream  where  we  watched  the  trout  and 
saw  a  kingfisher  flash  by.  We  said  it  was  not  a  bad 
place  to  spend  a  Sunday  morning  in  and  then  fell  into 
a  long  talk  about  Sunday  observance,  and  the  fact 
that  village  people,  the  men  especially,  had  lost  the 
habit  of  going  to  church  but  had  discovered  no  way 
of  spending  the  day  pleasantly  or  profitably.  I 
thought  that  outdoor  games  ought  to  be  encouraged 
as  it  was  plainly  beneficial  both  to  mind  and  body  and 
saved  them  from  tedium  and  the  temptations  to  drink 
and  smoke  more  than  was  good  for  them.  I  thought 
too  that  when  the  parson  of  the  parish  took  this  line 
the  effect  was  entirely  good  ;  it  taught  them  to  look 
on  him  as  more  human  and  one  of  themselves  and 
capable  of  putting  himself  in  their  place. 

My  companion  looked  grave  and  shook  his  head 
at  this,  and  when  I  told  him  that  I  knew  clergymen 
who  were  as  good  men  as  could  be  found  in  the  land 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS  149 

who  agreed  with  my  view,  and  were  the  promoters  of 
Sunday  games  in  their  parishes,  he  answered  that  if 
a  thing  were  wrong,  even  ministers  of  the  Gospel 
could  not  make  it  right.  He  was  in  the  middle  of 
his  argument  when  we  came  out  from  a  big  copse 
into  a  large  open  space,  and  created  a  panic  in  a 
multitude  of  rabbits  feeding  there.  Away  they 
scuttled  in  every  direction — hundreds  of  rabbits,  old 
and  half-grown  young.  Going  a  little  further  we 
noticed  our  small  spaniel  sniffing  at  a  burrow. 
"  He's  a  clever  little  dog,"  said  my  companion  ;  "  he 
always  lets  me  know  when  a  rabbit  is  not  too  far 
down."  With  that  he  got  down  on  the  turf,  and 
thrusting  his  arm  in  to  the  shoulder,  quickly  pulled 
out  a  young  rabbit,  which,  after  snapping  its  neck, 
he  thrust  into  his  large  coat-tail  pocket.  Putting  his 
arm  down  again  he  pulled  out  a  second  one,  then  a 
third,  and  having  snapped  their  necks  and  pocketed 
them,  he  got  up  and  we  resumed  our  walk  and  our 
discussion.  "  No,  no,"  he  said.  "  I'm  not  a  religious 
man,  and  don't  go  to  church  as  a  rule,  but  I  draw  the 
line  at  playing  games  on  a  Sunday." 

Then  he  came  to  a  stop  beside  a  close  thicket  of 
brambles  and  thorn,  and  began  pulling  the  rabbits 
out  of  his  pocket.  "After  all  I  don't  want  them, 
and  they  are  a  nuisance  to  carry,"  he  said,  and  with 
that  he  threw  them  into  the  thicket. 

That  was  my  story. 

"We  are  just  as  consistent  here,"  said  the  Cornish 
clergyman.  "The  people  are  religious  and  strict 
Sabbatarians  ;  they  go  regularly  to  church  or  chapel, 


150  THE   LAND'S   END 

but  if  a  vessel  in  distress  is  in  sight,  and  there  is  a 
chance  of  its  going  on  the  rocks,  they  make  an 
exception  ;  they  will  pace  the  cliffs  all  day  long  in  the 
hope  of  a  bit  of  flotsam  coming  in  their  way." 

They  may  appear  equally  inconsistent — the  Somer- 
set man  and  the  Cornishman — but  can  we  say  that  one 
is  morally  worse  than  the  other  ?     The  case  of  the 
good  artisan  who  drew  the  line  at  cricket  on  Sunday 
is    not    a    singular  one  :    one  doubts    if   there    is    a 
peasant  in   England,  however  truly  religious   a   man 
he  may  be,  who  would  not  pick  up  a  rabbit  or  hare  if 
he  got  the  chance  on  any  day  of  the  week.     They  do 
not  believe  it  is  wrong,  consequently  it  does  not  hurt 
their  conscience,  and  the  only  fear  they  have  is  to  be 
found    out.     And    so   with    the    Cornishman  ;    it    is 
ingrained  in  him,  and  is  like  an  inherited  knowledge, 
that   if  the   Power  that  rules   the  winds  and  waves, 
and  who  holds  the  lives  of  all  men  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand,  sends  a  ship  upon  the  rocks,  it  is  because 
he  thinks  proper  to  destroy  that  ship  and  incidentally 
to  scatter  gifts  among  his  people  living  on  the  coast. 
Shall  they  refuse  to  take  any  good  thing  he  chooses 
to   send   them  ?     If  their  minister  tells    them    it   is 
wrong  it  is  because  he  does  not  know  the  rights  of 
it.     Their  fathers  did    it,  and    their  forefathers,  for 
generations    back    and    were    no    worse    for    it.      It 
would  indeed  be  strange  if  they  did  not  resent  as  an 
injustice,   an    interference  with   their   natural    rights, 
that  so  strict  a  watch  is  kept  on  them,  and  that  they 
are  forbidden  to  take  anything  the  waves  may  cast  up 
in  their  way. 


MANNERS   AND    MORALS  151 

Quite  recently  we  had  some  rather  startling  mani- 
festations of  this  feeling  and  one  amusing  instance 
may  be  given.  Just  after  a  big  ship  had  come  to 
grief  on  the  rocks,  at  the  most  dangerous  point  on 
the  coast,  another  ship  was  in  great  peril  near  the 
same  spot  ;  fortunately,  towards  evening,  the  weather 
moderated  a  little  and  it  began  to  look  as  if  there 
was  not  going  to  be  a  second  disaster  just  then.  My 
informant  was  standing  on  the  shore  with  some  of 
the  fishermen  of  the  place  looking  at  the  sea.  The 
sky  was  clearing  and  the  sun,  near  the  horizon,  came 
forth  a  great  globe  of  red  fire  and  threw  its  light 
over  the  tumultuous  waters.  Then  all  at  once  one  of 
the  men  burst  out  in  a  storm  of  execration,  and 
cursed  the  sun  and  wind  and  sea  and  pretty  well  the 
whole  universe.  For  it  seemed  so  hard  just  when 
things  were  looking  so  well  that  the  sun  should  shine 
and  the  wind  begin  to  fall  and  the  sea  moderate  ! 
My  informant  asked  him  indignantly  how  he,  a 
Christian  man,  could  entertain  such  feelings  and 
how  he  dared  to  express  them.  He  answered  by 
putting  out  his  right  arm  and  baring  it  to  the  elbow, 
then,  feeling  the  muscles  with  the  fingers  of  the  left 
hand,  he  said  with  a  somewhat  rueful  expression,  "  It's 
in  the  bone,  and  we  can't  help  it !  " 

Yet  this  very  man  had  been  foremost  in  the  work 
of  rescuing  the  people  in  the  ship  that  had  gone  on 
the  rocks. 

My  informant  happens  to  be  one  of  the  English- 
men in  Cornwall  who  do  not  experience  that  antipathy 
or  sense  of  separation  in  mind  from  the  people  they 


152  THE   LAND'S   END 

live  with,  and  are  not  looked  at  as  foreigners.  I 
have  met  with  several  such  who  have  very  pleasant 
relations  with  their  neighbours,  and  can  love  and  are 
loved  by  them,  and  are  almost  able  to  forget  that  they 
are  not  natives.  But,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  in  such 
cases  the  stranger  is  not  wholly  a  stranger  ;  in  other 
words  he  is  partly  of  the  same  race,  therefore  able  to 
sympathise  and  to  identify  himself  with  them.  And 
it  may  be  due  to  the  Celtic  element  in  me  that  I  feel 
very  much  at  home  with  the  people.  A  Dumnonian, 
if  not  a  "  swart  Belerian,"  with  an  admixture  of  Irish 
blood,  I  feel  myself  related  to  them  and  therefore  do 
not  think  they  can  justly  resent  my  having  described 
them  as  I  have  found  them  without  the  usual  pretty 
little  lying  flatteries.  Your  relations  are  privileged 
critics.  Moreover,  if  I  love  them  they  cannot, 
according  to  their  own  saying,  have  any  but  a  kindly 
feeling  for  me.  "  Karenza  whelas  Karenza  "  is  all  the 
Cornish  I  know. 


CHAPTER  XII 

CORNISH    HUMOUR 

Native  humour — Deceptive  signs — Adventures  in  search  of  humour — 
Irish  and  Cornish  expression — A  traveller  in  a  stony  country — 
The  stone-digger — Taking  you  literally — The  danger  of  using 
figures  of  speech — Anecdotes — The  Cornish  funny  man — English 
and  Cornish  humour — Unconscious  humour  of  two  kinds — A 
woman  preacher — A  story  of  Brett  the  artist — Examples  of  un- 
conscious humour — A  local  preacher — An  old  man  and  a  parrot — 
Children's  humour — Guize-dancing. 

IT  is  permissible  to  a  writer  once  in  a  lifetime  to 
illustrate  his  work  by  an  allusion   to   that  cele- 
brated  "  Chapter    on    Snakes/'   in    an    island   in 
which  these  reptiles  are  not  found.     But  I  am  not 
saying  that  there  is  no  humour  in  Cornwall.     There 
may  be  such  a  thing  ;  but  if  you  meet  with  it  you 
will  find  that  it  is  of  the  ordinary  sort,  only  of  an 
inferior  quality,  and  that  there  is  very  little.     What 
I  can  say  is  there  is  no  Cornish  humour,  no  humour 
of  the  soil  and  race,  as  there  is  an  Irish  and  a  Scotch 


154  THE   LAND'S   END 

humour,  and  even  as  there  is  an  English  humour, 
which  may  be  of  a  poor  description  in  comparison 
with  the  Hibernian,  but  is  humour  nevertheless, 
native  and  local,  and  not  confined  to  Dorset  and 
Warwickshire  but  to  be  met  with  in  every  county 
from  the  Tamar  to  the  Tweed. 

This  came  as  a  great  surprise  to  me  since  I  had 
often  read  in  books  and  articles  about  the  county  that 
the  Cornish  are  a  humorous  folk,  and  those  who 
have  been  there  and  profess  to  know  the  people  say 
that  it  is  so.  Their  humour,  like  their  imagination 
(for  they  are  also  credited  with  that  faculty),  is  some- 
times vaguely  described  as  of  the  Celtic  sort.  My 
surprise  was  all  the  greater  when  I  came  and  saw  the 
people  and  received  confirmation,  as  I  imagined, 
through  the  sense  of  sight  of  all  I  had  been  told. 
They  looked  it,  yet  were  without  it ;  the  signs, 
"gracious  as  rainbows,"  deceived  me  (as  they  had 
doubtless  deceived  others),  but  only  for  a  season  ; 
they  were  the  outward  marks  of  quite  other  pleasing 
qualities  with  which  we  are  not  now  concerned. 
I  looked  for  humour  and  met  with  some  amusing 
adventures  in  my  search  for  that  rare,  elusive  quality. 

Walking  to  a  village  one  day  I  fell  in  with  a  man 
who  had,  like  many  a  West  Cornishman,  a  strikingly 
Irish  countenance,  also  an  Irish  voice  and  flow  of 
spirits.  Hearing  where  I  was  going  he  at  once  un- 
dertook to  show  me  the  nearest  way.  It  would,  he 
asserted,  save  me  a  good  mile  :  his  way  proved  in  the 
end  two  miles  further  than  the  one  I  had  chosen,  but 
it  led  him  near  to  his  own  cottage  and  he  wanted 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  155 

badly  to  shorten  the  way  with  talk — that  was  all. 
I  did  not  mind,  because  I  wished  to  listen  to  him, 
thinking  that  I  had  at  length  got  hold  of  the  right 
person,  one  who  would  give  me  a  taste  of  the  genuine 
native  humour.  Not  a  bit  of  it !  He  talked  freely 
of  many  things — his  native  place,  his  family,  his 
neighbours,  the  good  and  the  bad  in  them,  his  past 
life  and  labours,  future  prospects  and  much  more — 
a  long  talk  which  an  Irishman  would  have  enlivened 
with  many  flashes  of  quaint  humour,  but  there  was 
not  the  faintest  trace  of  such  a  quality  in  it. 

Later  in  the  same  day  I  walked  by  a  footpath  which 
led  me  through  what  is  called  the  "  town-place  "  of  a 
small  farm-house.  Here  I  found  two  men  engaged 
in  an  animated  discussion,  and  one,  in  ragged  clothes 
with  a  pitchfork  in  his  hand,  was  the  very  type  of  a 
wild  Irishman  ;  in  all  Connemara  you  would  not  find 
a  more  perfect  specimen — rags,  old  battered  hat, 
twinkling  grey-blue  Irish  eyes,  a  shock  of  the  most 
fiery  carroty  red  hair,  and,  finally,  a  short  black  clay 
pipe,  or  dhudeen,  in  his  mouth.  Yet  even  this  man, 
delightful  to  look  at,  proved  when  I  conversed  with 
him  just  as  prosaic  and  disappointing  as  the  other. 

I  certainly  did  not  expect  to  find  anything  in  these 
'  two  and  in  scores  more  I  had  intercourse  with  which 
could  be  set  down  in  a  note-book  as  specimens  of 
Cornish  humour.  One  may  spend  days  among  Irish 
peasants  and  never  hear  anything  worth  repeating, 
especially  in  writing.  Indeed,  most  of  what  we  re- 
cognise as  Irish  humour  is  not  translatable  into  written 
language.  It  is  like  the  quality  of  charm  in  women, 


156  THE   LAND'S   END 

something  personal  which  you  receive  directly  and 
cannot  convey  to  another.  But  you  are  all  the  time 
conscious  of  the  humorous  spirit  in  them  ;  you  see 
it  in  their  eyes  and  mobile  mouth  and  gestures,  and 
you  catch  its  accent  in  their  speech.  And  you  feel 
how  good  a  thing  it  is  ;  that  a  people  possessing  this 
quality,  or  faculty,  in  so  eminent  a  degree  is  not  so 
poor  as  others  who  have  more  comforts  and  are  more 
civilised  ;  that  even  want  and  squalor,  and  misery, 
and  vice,  and  crime,  are  not  as  ugly  and  disgusting  as 
they  appear  among  those  who  are  without  this  spark- 
ling spirit,  this  lightning  of  the  soul,  with  its  un- 
expected flashes,  which  throws  a  brightness  on 
everything. 

The  people  of  the  extreme  west  of  Cornwall  have 
so  close  a  resemblance  to  the  Irish  in  feature  and  ex- 
pression that  quite  often  enough  when  with  them,  in 
farms  and  hamlets,  I  could  hardly  avoid  falling  into 
the  illusion  that  I  was  in  Ireland.  It  is  this  look  in 
them,  or  in  many  of  them,  which  makes  the  want  of 
the  Irishman's  most  engaging  quality  so  strange  and 
almost  incredible.  There  is  an  expression  of  the  Irish 
peasant's  face  which  is  exceedingly  common — one 
could  almost  say  that  it  is  universal — which  one  comes 
to  regard  as  an  expression  of  a  humorous  mind.  It  is 
most  marked  in  those  who  see  you  as  a  stranger 
among  them,  or  in  those  you  meet  casually  and  con- 
verse with.  It  is  a  peculiarly  shrewd  penetrating  look 
in  the  eyes,  which  appear  to  be  examining  you  very 
narrowly  while  passing  itself  off  as  mere  friendly 
interest  in  you  ;  and  with  that  look  in  the  eye  there  is 


OF    THE 

fi   UNIVERSITY 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  157 

a  lighting  up  of  the  whole  face.  The  man,  you  imagine, 
is  looking  out  for  some  signal  of  a  sympathetic  or 
understanding  spirit  in  you,  a  token  of  kinship  :  but 
when  we  go  further  and  imagine  it  a  humorous  spirit 
we  are  probably  mistaken.  We  associate  that  peculiar 
expression  of  the  eyes  with  the  humorous  mind  be- 
cause we  have  found  them  together  in  so  many  per- 
sons —  if  we  have  been  in  Ireland.  In  the  Cornishman, 
too,  that  same  expression  of  the  eyes  is  exceedingly 
common  —  an  expression  which  even  more  than  feature 
makes  him  differ  so  greatly  from  the  Anglo-Saxon. 
But  it  does  not  denote  humour,  seeing  that  he  is  in- 
ferior to  the  dullest  of  the  English  in  this  respect. 
But  he  is  more  alive  than  the  Englishman,  and  his 
ever-fresh  child-like  curiosity  makes  him  seem  more 
human. 

This  peculiar  Irish-like  alertness  and  liveliness  of 
mind,  with  a  total  want  of  a  sense  of  humour,  struck 
me  forcibly  in  the  case  of  another  Cornishman  I 
encountered  in  my  rambles.  But  before  I  get  to 
this  story  another  must  be  told  by  way  of  intro- 
duction. 

Frequently  in  my  wanderings  on  foot  in  that  stoniest 
part  of  a  stony  land,  called  the  Connemara  of  Corn- 
wall, where  indeed  the  likeness  of  the  people  to  the 
Irish  is  most  marked,  I  recalled  an  old  anecdote  about 
a  stony  country  which  I  heard  in  boyhood.  I  heard  it 
one  morning  at  the  breakfast  table  in  my  early  home 
in  South  America.  We  had  a  big  party  in  the  house, 
and  the  talk  turned  on  the  subject  of  sharp  and  clever 
replies  made  by  natives  to  derisive  questions  asked 


158  THE   LAND'S   END 

by  travellers.  Several  of  the  men  present  had  been 
great  travellers  themselves,  and  almost  every  one  had 
a  good  story  or  two  to  relate,  but  the  best  of  all 
was  one  of  a  traveller  who  had  been  walking  for  many 
hours  in  one  of  the  stoniest  districts  he  had  ever  been 
in.  As  far  as  he  could  see  on  every  side  the  earth  was 
strewn  with  masses  of  stone,  and  he  was  quite  tired 
of  the  endless  desolation.  At  length  he  came  on  a 
native  engaged  in  piling  up  stones  in  a  field,  and 
approaching  him  addressed  him  as  follows  :  "  My 
good  man,  can  you  tell  me  where  the  people  of  these 
parts  procure  stone  with  which  to  build  their 
houses  ? "  That  was  the  mocking  question,  and  the 
witty  answer  of  the  native  created  a  great  laugh  at 
the  table,  but  unfortunately  I  have  forgotten  what  it 
was.  I  have  tried  in  that  stony  place  to  recall  it 
without  success.  It  may  be  that  some  reader  of  this 
chapter  has  heard  and  remembers  the  answer  ;  if  so, 
I  hope  he  will  have  the  goodness  to  communicate  it  to 
me,  and  relieve  my  tired  mind  from  further  efforts  to 
recover  it. 

Now  one  day  in  Cornwall,  while  walking  on  a  vast 
stony  hill  above  the  little  village  of  Towednack,  I 
spied  a  man  at  work  digging  up  stone  in  the  middle 
of  a  freshly  ploughed  field  at  the  foot  of  the  hill. 
He  had  a  crowbar,  which  he  would  thrust  down  into 
the  soil  to  find  where  there  was  stone  near  the  surface ; 
then  with  his  three-cornered,  long-handled  spade  he 
would  dig  down  and  expose  it,  and  if  too  large  to  be 
lifted  he  would,  with  drill  and  wedges  and  iron  mallet, 
split  it  up  into  pieces  of  a  convenient  size.  In  this 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  159 

way  he  had  raised  a  vast  heap  of  stones,  which  would 
be  carted  away  by  and  by. 

It  came  into  my  head  to  try  my  old  story  as  an 
experiment  on  this  man,  and  I  went  down  the  hill  to 
him  and  after  saluting  him  stood  some  time  admiring 
his  tremendous  energy.  He  was  a  slim  wiry  man  of 
about  thirty  or  thirty-five,  good-looking,  with  a  Celtic 
face  and  that  lively  shrewd  expression  which  one 
associates  with  the  Irishman's  humorous  spirit.  After 
watching  him  for  a  few  minutes  at  his  frantic  task  I 
said,  "  By  the  by,  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  where 
they  get  the  stone  in  this  part  of  the  country  to 
build  their  houses  with  ? " 

He  turned  and  stared  me  in  the  face  with  the 
greatest  astonishment,  then  throwing  out  his  hand  in 
an  angry  way  towards  the  vast  heap  of  black  wet 
chunks  of  granite  he  had  dragged  out  of  the  earth, 
he  cried ,  "  This  is  stone  !  This  is  what  they  build 
houses  with  in  this  part  of  the  country  !  Stone  !— 
granite  ! — there's  enough  of  it  in  the  ground  to  build 
all  the  houses  we  want,  and  on  the  ground  too  !  " 

Then  he  stared  again  and  finally  waved  his  arm 
towards  the  hill  I  had  descended  from,  strewn  all  over 
with  huge  boulders  and  masses  of  granite,  and  added, 
"  All  you've  got  to  do  is  to  use  your  own  eyes  and 
they'll  show  you  where  we  get  stone  to  build  houses 
with  !  " 

I  was  obliged  to  explain  that  I  had  only  asked  that 
preposterous  question  in  fun  :  then  he  calmed  down 
and  stood  silent  for  some  time,  with  eyes  resting  on 
a  chunk  of  granite  at  his  feet,  revolving  the  matter 


160  THE   LAND'S   END 

in  his  mind,  but  he  did  not  appear  to  think  there  was 
anything  very  funny  in  it.  But  the  extraordinary 
thing  was  that  after  he  had  quite  got  over  the  un- 
comfortable feeling  I  had  given  him — the  suspicion, 
perhaps,  that  his  interlocutor  was  not  quite  right  in 
his  head — he  proved  as  lively  and  agreeable  a  talker 
as  I  have  met  among  the  Cornish  people  of  his  class, 
and  gave  me  an  entertaining  account  of  the  various 
occupations  he  had  followed  since  the  tin-mine  in 
which  he  had  worked  as  a  boy  had  been  abandoned. 
He  was,  in  fact,  a  very  intelligent  fellow,  with  nice 
feelings  and  sentiments,  and  as  pleasant  to  talk  with 
as  any  one  could  be  without  a  sense  of  humour. 

When  we  look  for  something  and  find  it  not  our 
non-success  is  apt  to  produce  a  dogged  spirit  in  us 
and  we  go  on  looking  even  after  our  reason  has 
assured  us  that  the  object  sought  for  is  not  there,  or 
has  no  existence.  That  is  how  it  was  with  me  ;  I 
was  determined  to  find  that  rarity  in  Cornwall — a 
man  with  a  sense  of  humour.  And  in  my  quest  1 
did  not  hold  my  tongue  about  my  encounter  with  the 
stone-digger  ;  I  told  it  to  at  least  a  dozen  persons 
and  they  one  and  all  received  it  coldly.  The  last  one 
was  a  farmer  ;  he  listened  attentively,  then  after  an 
interval  of  silence  remarked,  "  Yes,  I  see ;  the  man 
did  not  understand  your  question  in  the  sense  you 
meant.  It  was  a  joke  and  he  took  it  seriously  ;  I 


see." 


He  saw  but  he  didn't  smile,  and  I  thereupon  re- 
solved never  again  to  tell  the  story  of  the  man  digging 
granite  in  a  ploughed  field  to  any  one  in  Cornwall. 


CORNISH   HUMOUR 


161 


Another  instance  of  this  curious  child-like  simplicity 
of  mind  in  the  native  was  almost  painful.  To  have 
one's  words  taken  literally  in  some  cases  produces  the 
uncomfortable  feeling  that  there  is  something  wrong 


CORNISH    PEASANT 


with  the  brain  of  the  person  spoken  to.  I  was  walk- 
ing on  the  moor  one  day  in  spring  in  oppressingly 
warm  weather  when,  on  passing  close  by  a  small 
farm-house,  I  caught  sight  of  the  farmer  standing 
outside  and  stopped  to  have  a  little  talk  with  him. 


1 62  THE  LAND'S   END 

He  was  a  handsome  intelligent  fellow  with  a  very 
pleasing  expression,  and  in  a  few  minutes  we  were 
talking  and  laughing  like  old  friends.  "  How  far  is 
it  to  Zennor  ? "  I  said  ;  "  I'm  walking  there."  He 
answered  that  it  was  exactly  five  miles  from  his  door. 
"  Then,"  I  returned,  "  I  wish  you  could  tell  me 
how  to  get  there  without  going  through  the  inter- 
vening space."  He  looked  strangely  puzzled.  "  Well 
"  he  began,  and  then  stopped  and  cast  down  his 

eyes.     "  Really — I   don't   quite   see '   he   started 

again,  and  again  stopped,  more  puzzled  than  ever. 
Then  he  made  a  desperate  effort  to  grapple  with  the 
problem.  "  You  see,  it's  this  way,"  he  said  ;  "  the 
space  is  there — you  can't  get  over  that,  and  so  I  can't 

quite  make  out  how But  I  was  sorry  to  see 

him  distressed  and  quickly  changed  the  subject,  to  his 
great  relief. 

I  was  told  by  the  vicar  of  a  parish  I  was  staying  in 
that  one  had  always  to  remember  that  the  Cornish 
people  take  what  is  said  literally  ;  if  you  forget  this 
and  inadvertently  make  use  of  some  little  figure  of 
speech  so  common  in  conversation  that  it  is  hard  not 
to  use  it,  you  are  apt  to  get  into  trouble.  The  vicar 
himself,  after  twenty  years'  intimate  relations  with  his 
parishioners,  was  liable  to  little  slips  of  this  kind,  as 
I  found.  One  day  when  I  was  there  a  man  from  a 
neighbouring  hamlet  came  to  the  village  and  by 
chance  met  the  vicar.  "  Why,  Mr.  So-and-so,"  ex- 
claimed the  latter,  shaking  hands  with  him,  "  it's  a 
hundred  years  since  I  saw  you  ! "  Then  after  a  little 
friendly  talk  they  separated.  But  that  unlucky  phrase 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  163 

stuck  in  the  man's  mind,  and  he  spent  most  of  the 
day  in  going  into  the  houses  of  all  his  intimates  in 
the  village  and  discussing  the  subject  with  them. 
"  He  said  it  were  a  hundred  years  since  he  saw  me — 
now  what  did  parson  mean  by  that  ?  "  When,  anxious 
to  make  a  little  mischief  (having  nothing  else  to  do), 
I  reported  the  matter  to  the  vicar,  he  slapped  his  leg 
angrily  and  exclaimed,  "  That's  how  it  is  with  them  ! 
There's  an  instance  for  you  !  "  But  it  was  a  very 
delightful  one,  and  in  another  moment  his  vexation 
vanished  in  a  burst  of  laughter. 

One  might  imagine  that  such  misunderstandings 
simply  result  from  stupidity.  It  is  not  so,  unless 
we  say  that  stupidity  is  nothing  but  the  want  of  that 
sense  which  acts  on  our  social  intercourse  much  as  the 
thyroid  gland  does  on  the  bodily  system,  or,  to  take 
another  image,  like  that  subtle  ingredient  of  a  salad 
which  "  animates  the  whole."  Curious  to  say,  the 
most  striking  instance  I  met  with  of  this  want  was 
from  a  man  of  that  unpleasant  class  who  must  be  for 
ever  doing  or  saying  something  to  raise  a  laugh. 
They  are  found  everywhere,  even  in  Cornwall,  and 
are  common  as  is  the  "  merry  fellow  "  described  over 
a  century  ago  in  the  Rambler — the  man  whose  ready 
hearty  laugh  and  perpetual  good  humour  and  desire 
to  say  something  to  make  you  happy  proceed  from 
his  high  spirits.  He  is  quite  tolerable  :  the  would- 
be  witty  or  humorous  person,  the  clown  in  the 
company,  determined  to  live  up  to  his  reputation,  is 
rather  detestable,  and  reminds  one  of  the  actor  who 
can  never  be  himself  but  is  always  posing  to  an 


i64  THE   LAND'S   END 

audience  even  when  alone  with  his  wife  or  nursing 
the  baby  when  his  wife  is  asleep. 

I  travelled  with  my  Cornish  funny  man  from 
Truro  to  Exeter,  and  as  we  talked  the  whole  time 
I  got  to  know  him  precty  well.  He  was  a  middle- 
aged,  strong,  good-looking  fellow,  and  a  good  type  of 
the  shrewd,  hard-headed  Cornishman  of  the  small- 
farmer  class  ;  he  was  a  farmer  and  cattle-dealer,  and 
had  been  head  gamekeeper  on  a  large  landowner's 
estate.  The  trouble  was  that  he  prided  himself  on 
his  wit  and  humour,  or  for  what  passes  as  wit  among 
the  people  of  his  class,  and,  above  all,  on  his  good 
stones.  He  would  now  tell  us  a  story,  he  would 
say,  which  would  make  us  "  die  with  laughing,"  and 
when  it  was  received  without  a  smile  he  was  puzzled, 
and  assured  us  that  he  had  always  considered  it  one 
of  his  best  stories.  However,  he  had  others,  plenty 
of  them,  which  we  would  perhaps  think  better  ;  but 
these  were  better  only  because  they  were  coarser  and 
more  plentifully  garnished  with  swear  words,  and  in 
the  end  the  other  passengers — two  or  three  grave 
elderly  gentlemen,  who  had  an  armful  of  books  and 
papers  to  occupy  their  minds — refused  to  listen  any 
longer.  He  then  gave  it  up,  but  being  of  a  social 
disposition  he  continued  to  converse  with  me  in 
a  quiet  sober  way,  but  there  was  now  a  little  cloud  on 
his  countenance  which  had  been  so  sunny  before,  as  if 
our  want  of  appreciation  had  hurt  him  in  a  tender 
part.  The  hurt  had,  perhaps,  made  him  quarrelsome  ; 
at  all  events  we  presently  fell  out  over  a  very  trivial 
matter.  We  were  discussing  the  scenery  through 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  165 

which  we  were  passing  when  he  remarked  on  the 
prettiness  of  a  scene  that  came  before  our  eyes  and 
I  agreed  ;  but  by  and  by  when  he  used  the  same  ex- 
pression about  another  scene  I  disagreed.  "  Do  you 
not  then  see  anything  to  admire  in  it  ?  "  he  asked, 
and  when  I  said  that  I  admired  it  he  wanted  to  know 
why  1  refused  to  allow  that  it  was  pretty  after  having 
called  something  else  pretty  because  I  admired  it  ? 
He  began  to  harp  on  this  subject  and  to  grow 
satirical,  and  wanted  to  know  of  every  scene  we 
passed  whether  I  called  it  pretty  or  not,  and  if  not 
why  not.  My  replies  did  not  seem  to  enlighten  him 
much,  and  at  last  in  a  passion  he  begged  me  to  tell 
him  in  plain  language,  if  of  two  scenes  we  both 
admired  one  was  pretty  and  the  other  not  pretty, 
why  he  called  them  both  pretty.  I  answered  that  it 
was  because  he  had  a  limited  vocabulary. 

He  threw  himself  back  in  his  seat  and  looked  at 
me  as  if  I  had  struck  or  insulted  him,  then  ex- 
claimed, "  Oh,  that's  it — I  have  a  limited  vocabu- 
lary !  "  and  presently  he  added  bitterly,  "  This  is  the 
first  time  in  my  life  that  I  have  been  charged  with 
having  a  limited  vocabulary."  Without  saying  more 
he  got  up,  and  going  into  the  corridor  planted  his 
elbows  on  the  sill,  and  supporting  his  head  with  his 
hands,  stared  gloomily  at  the  landscape  for  about  a 
quarter  of  an  hour.  Then  he  came  back  to  his  seat 
and  looked  at  me  with  a  different  countenance  ;  the 
expression  of  sullen  resentment  had  changed  to  a 
quite  friendly  one  but  overcast  with  something  like 
regret  or  shame,  and  speaking  in  a  subdued  manner 


1 66  THE    LAND'S   END 

he  said,  "  You  are  right,  and  I  deserved  it.  I  know 
it  is  a  great  fault  in  me,  but  1  assure  you  that  when  I 
use  bad  words  in  conversation  I  mean  no  more  harm 
than — what  shall  I  say  ? — than  a  woman  when  she 
says,  '  Oh,  bother  it ! '  or  c  Drat  the  thing  ! '  because 
she  can't  fasten  her  blouse  or  her  belt.  'Pon  my  soul 
I  don't !  It's  just  a  way  I've  got  into,  and  the  words 
you  didn't  like  slip  out  without  my  knowing  it." 
And  so  on,  with  much  more  in  the  same  apologetic 
strain.  After  that  there  was  peace  between  us.  I  was 
indeed  rather  sorry  to  lose  him  at  Exeter  :  as  a 
"  funny  man,"  without  a  sense  of  humour,  he  had 
greatly  entertained  me,  and  wishing  him  well,  I 
hoped  he  would  continue  in  his  mistake  about  a 
"limited  vocabulary"  in  the  sense  in  which  he  had 
taken  the  phrase. 

My  friend  the  vicar,  who  made  the  mistake  of 
saying  it  was  a  hundred  years  since  he  had  seen  some 
one,  told  me  one  day  that  he  had  been  attending  a 
meeting  of  the  clergy  of  the  district,  and  finding 
himself  in  conversation  with  three  friends  who  were 
all  Cornishmen  of  good  old  local  families,  it  occurred 
to  him  that  it  was  a  good  opportunity  to  find  out 
what  educated  men  in  the  county  would  have  to  say 
on  such  a  subject.  The  question,  Did  the  Cornish 
people  have  a  sense  of  humour  ?  took  them  by  sur- 
prise ;  they  had  never  considered  it — it  had  never 
come  before  them  until  that  moment.  After  some 
discussion  it  was  decided  in  the  affirmative  ;  the 
Cornish  have  a  sense  of  humour,  but — a  very  im- 
portant but — it  is  not  the  same  as  the  sense  of 


CORNISH   HUMOUR 


167 


humour  in  the  English  people.  English  humour, 
they  said,  fell  flat  in  Cornwall,  even  where  it  was 
seen,  or  guessed,  that  the  words  spoken  were  intended 
to  be  humorous.  If  they  laughed  or  smiled,  it  was 
out  of  politeness  or  good  nature,  just  to  please  you. 


CORNISH    WOMAN 

And  as  our  humour  failed  with  them,  so  did  theirs 
fail  with  us  :  we  did  not  appreciate  it  simply  because 
it  was  impossible  for  us,  being  Englishmen,  to  see  it 
as  they  did  with  their  Cornish  minds. 

A  local  writer,  the  late  J.  T.  Tregellas,  who  wrote 
funny  poems  in  dialect,  and  surveyed  life  generally 
from  the  comic  point  of  view,  has  a  considerable 


1 68  THE   LAND'S   END 

reputation  in  the  county.  In  one  of  his  works, 
entitled  Peeps  into  the  Haunts  and  Homes  of  the  Popula- 
tion of  Cornwall  (Truro,  1879),  ms  avowed  intention 
is  to  "place  before  the  reader  a  tolerably  exact  picture 
of  a  Cornishman  as  he  is,  with  all  his  rough  sense  of 
honour,  his  kind  heart,  his  self-reliance,  his  naivete, 
his  ingenuity,  and  his  keen  quiet  power  of  wit  and 
observation."  There  are  scores  of  more  or  less  funny 
stories  in  this  book,  but  one  is  soon  weary  of  reading 
it,  because  there  is  little  or  no  evidence  in  it  of  the 
"  keen  quiet  power  of  wit "  one  looks  for.  One 
finds  what  may  be  described  as  primitive  humour — 
the  humour  of  children  and  of  men  in  a  low  state  of 
culture  who  delight  in  practical  jokes,  rough  banter, 
farcical  adventures,  grotesque  blunders  and  misunder- 
standings and  horse-play.  Of  unconscious  humour 
there  are  many  examples,  which  undoubtedly  shows  a 
sense  of  humour  in  the  narrator  :  and  1  will  quote 
the  conclusion  of  one  of  the  tales,  perhaps  the  gem 
of  the  book,  in  which  an  old  widow  relates  her  three 
matrimonial  ventures.  "  And  then  I  married  a  tailor 
who  did  praich  sometimes,  and  was  a  soort  of  a  tee- 
totaler in  his  way,  and  never  drinked  nothing  but  tay 
and  sich  like  ;  and  then  he  faded  away  to  a  shaade, 
and  this  day  three  weeks  he  died  ;  and  ater  he  was 
dead  they  cut  un  oppen  to  see  what  was  the  matter 
with  un.  But  waan  of  the  young  doctors  that  helped 
to  do  ut  towled  me  that  he  died  all  feer  and  they 
couldn't  find  nuthin  in  un  but  grooshuns  [tea  sedi- 
ment.] I  woant  have  nothin'  of  that  soort  agen,  but 
I'll  get  a  farmer  with  a  little  money  ;  and  so  I  oft  to, 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  169 

for  I've  got  twenty  pounds  a  year  and  a  house  to  live 
in." 

Books  of  this  kind  do  not  help  us  much  ;  they 
are,  on  the  contrary,  apt  to  be  misleading  when  the 
author  has  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  people  and 
dialect — and,  besides,  a  little  invention. 

There  are,  I  take  it,  two  common  sorts  of  un- 
conscious humour  ;  one  into  which  persons  who  may 
be  of  humorous  minds  are  apt  to  tumble  through 
thinking  too  quickly  and  being  too  intent  on  their 
point,  and  who  in  their  haste  snatch  at  any  expression 
that  offers  to  illustrate  their  meaning  without  consider- 
ing its  suitability.  The  result  may  be  a  bull  or  a  mixed 
metaphor.  An  Irishman,  asked  to  define  a  bull, 
after  a  moment's  thought  replied,  "  Well,  if  you  were 
to  see  two  cows  lying  down  in  a  field,  and  one  was 
standing  up,  that  would  be  a  bull."  A  Cornishman 
would  be  incapable  of  such  a  reply  ;  or  of  the  Irish- 
man's retort  when  his  companion,  accused  of  being 
drunk,  protested  that  he  was  sober :  "  If  ye  was  sober 
ye'd  have  the  sinse  to  know  ye  was  dhrunk."  He 
makes  no  bulls  and  does  not  know  what  they  are. 
His  unconscious  humour  is  of  the  second  kind,  which 
consists  in  saying  things  in  a  way  which  would  be 
impossible  to  any  person  possessing  a  sense  of  humour. 
Here  is  an  example  : — 

At  St.  Ives,  one  Sunday,  I  went  to  a  Methodist 
chapel  to  hear  a  woman  preach — a  missioner  or  gos- 
peller, I  think  she  was  called.  I  did  not  find  her 
a  Dinah,  for  she  was  rather  large  and  stout,  of  a  high 
colour,  with  black  eyes  and  hair.  But  it  was  a  singu- 


170  THE   LAND'S   END 

larly  intelligent  and  sympathetic  face,  and  to  hear  her 
was  a  pleasure  and  a  relief,  for  it  was  on  the  eve  of 
the  last  general  election,  when  all  the  Little  Bethels  of 
Bolerium  were  being  put  to  strange  uses  and  pulpits 
were  the  rostrums  of  enraged  politicians  in  white  ties. 
She,  sweet  woman,  preached  only  religion  pure  and 
simple  in  a  nice  voice  without  hysteria  and  with  a 
charming  persuasiveness.  To  hear  her  was  to  love 
her.  A  few  days  later  she  left  the  town,  and  then 
one  who  was  interested  in  her  work  rushed  in  to  the 
minister  of  the  chapel  to  ask  how  many  souls  she  had 
won  for  Christ  on  this  occasion.  For  she  had  on 
previous  visits  been  very  successful  in  making  con- 
verts. "  Not  one  this  time,"  answered  the  minister. 
"We  were  too  busy  with  the  elections." 

A  remark  made  by  one  of  the  fishermen  at  a  small 
coast  village  near  Land's  End  about  Brett,  the  marine 
painter,  affords  another  pretty  example  of  the  native 
unconscious  humour.  Brett's  outspoken  atheism  and 
brusque  manners  greatly  offended  the  fisherfolk,  and 
when  he  began  work  they  watched  him  very  narrowly, 
curious  to  know  what  kind  of  picture  so  extraordinary 
a  person  would  produce.  It  astonished  them  to  see 
him  use  his  palette-knife  instead  of  a  brush  to  put 
on  paint  and  spread  it  over  the  canvas.  They  had 
never  seen  such  a  method  before,  and  it  appeared  to 
them  wrong  or  not  a  legitimate  way.  One  day  on 
the  beach  they  were  discussing  the  strange  artist  within 
their  gates  with  reference  to  some  fresh  cause  of 
offence  on  his  part,  when  the  remark  was  made  by 
one,  "  What  can  you  expect  of  a  man  who  says 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  171 

there's  no  God  and  paints  his  pictures  with  a 
knife  ? " 

Here  is  another  instance  from  Penzance.  There 
is  a  public  garden  in  the  town,  with  beds  of  flowers, 
benches,  a  bandstand,  a  fountain,  and  at  one  side  some 
tall  elm  trees  with  a  rookery.  The  little  fishes  in  the 
basin  of  water  attracted  a  pair  of  kingfishers,  and 
they  haunted  the  gardens,  flashing  a  wonderful  blue 
in  the  eyes  of  the  people.  But  they  took  the  fry — 
the  little  sickly  fishes  which  had  cost  the  town 
several  shillings — and  the  Town  Council  forthwith 
had  them  destroyed.  I  should  have  said  that  only 
in  a  Cornish  town  could  so  abominable  an  instance  of 
Philistinism  be  found  had  I  not  witnessed  an  even 
worse  one  when  staying  at  Bath,  when  the  Corporation 
of  that  noble  town  ordered  the  killing  of  the  king- 
fishers that  frequented  the  old  Roman  baths. 

After  the  kingfishers  had  been  destroyed  at  Pen- 
zance, the  question  of  the  rooks  came  up  for  discus- 
sion, and  it  was  resolved  to  shoot  the  birds  and  pull 
the  nests  down ;  but  here,  as  I  was  informed,  the  town 
clerk  intervened  and  pleaded  so  eloquently  for  the 
birds  that  they  were  spared.  Now  one  day  a  group 
of  old  men,  habitues  of  the  gardens,  were  sunning 
themselves  there  and  discussing  this  question  of  the 
rooks.  The  birds  were  there,  repairing  their  old 
nests  in  the  elms  with  a  good  deal  of  caw,  caw. 
They  were  as  talkative  as  the  old  men,  but  "  deep 
in  their  day's  employ  "  at  the  same  time.  Joining  in 
the  conversation,  I  expressed  my  opinion  of  the 
councillors  for  wanting  to  destroy  the  rookery,  and 


172  THE   LAND'S   END 

was  asked  indignantly  by  one  of  the  old  men  how 
I  would  like  it  if,  on  a  Sunday  on  my  way  to  chapel 
in  a  black  coat  and  silk  hat,  I  were  to  pass  under  the 
rookery  and  something  were  to  happen  to  my  hat. 
I  replied  that  I  always  attended  chapel  in  tweeds  and 
that  if  I  wore  a  silk  hat  it  would  serve  me  right  to 
have  something  happen  to  it.  Such  an  occurrence 
would  only  afford  an  additional  reason  for  preserving 
the  birds.  My  questioner  glared  at  me,  and  I  judged 
from  their  looks  that  the  others  did  not  approve  of 
such  sentiments. 

It  was  very  funny,  but  I  heard  an  even  funnier  one 
when  listening  to  the  talk  of  a  knot  of  elderly  and 
middle-aged  men  discussing  the  treatment  the  Educa- 
tion Bill  was  receiving  in  the  House  of  Lords.  But 
it  was  not  in  Penzance,  and  I  will  mercifully  conceal 
the  name  of  the  little  town  in  Bolerium  where  I  heard 
it.  The  men,  it  must  be  observed,  were  all  Method- 
ists who  had  adopted  the  view  of  the  question  which 
the  ministers  had  been  expounding  in  the  chapels. 
"What  we  want  in  England,"  said  one,  "is  the 
Russian  system,  just  to  remove  the  men  in  the  two 
Houses  who  are  opposing  the  will  of  the  people." 
The  sentiment  was  heartily  applauded  by  all  the 
others.  It  was  delightfully  Cornish — just  the  senti- 
ment one  would  expect  to  hear  from  the  deeply 
religious  Cornishman. 

At  this  same  place  I  heard  about  a  local  preacher, 
a  man  of  a  very  fine  character,  who  was  taxed  one 
day  by  his  employer  with  having  served  as  a  model 
to  an  artist  of  the  town,  a  Mr.  Charles.  "  Yes,"  he 


CORNISH   HUMOUR  173 

said,  "  I  have  been  sitting  to  Mr.  Charles,  and  have 
had  a  good  deal  of  conversation  with  him."  Then 
after  a  long  interval  of  silence  he  added,  "Yes,  1 
have  been  sitting  to  him.  Mr.  Charles  has  religion, 
but  it  is  very,  very,  very,  very,  very  deep  down." 

This  appeared  to  be  a  clue  worth  following  up, 
and  I  at  once  sought  out  this  man  and  was  delighted 
to  know  him  ;  he  was,  physically  and  mentally,  a 
type  of  all  that  is  best  in  the  Cornishman,  but  after 
a  long  talk  on  many  subjects  with  him  I  was  convinced 
that  he  was  without  the  sense  of  humour.  At  the 
same  time  I  felt  that  this  was  scarcely  a  defect  in  one 
of  his  nature.  I  felt,  too,  that  something  like  this 
might  be  said  of  the  people  generally — the  sense 
which  they  lack  seems  less  important  in  their  case 
than  in  that  of  others  ;  it  is  not  so  much  missed — 
because  of  their  perennial  vitality,  their  fresh  im- 
pressible mind  and  sense  of  eternal  youth  and  curious 
interest  in  little  things  which  never  fades  and  fails. 
Here  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  four  men  whose 
respective  ages  were  eighty-one,  eighty-five,  eighty-six, 
and  eighty-eight.  There  was  no  sign  of  weariness  in 
any  of  them  ;  they  were  as  much  alive  and  in  love 
with  life  as  their  middle-aged  neighbours  and  as  the 
young,  down  even  to  the  children. 

These  general  reflections  bring  back  to  mind  yet 
one  more  incident  bearing  on  the  point — an  example 
of  the  buoyant  child  surviving  in  a  man  well  advanced 
in  years. 

I  had  wasted  a  day  indoors  at  Penzance  reading 
books  when,  hearing  the  hour  of  four  strike,  I  flew  out 


174  THE   LAND'S   END 

for  a  walk  to  the  neighbouring  hills  before  dark. 
Hurrying  along  the  street,  which  led  me  away  from 
the  front,  I  felt  that  I  wanted  my  afternoon  cup  of 
tea  and  thought  1  had  better  get  it  before  quitting  the 
town.  I  soon  came  to  a  small  baker's  shop,  and 
going  in  and  pushing  open  the  door  at  the  back  dis- 
covered the  baker  and  his  family  just  sitting  down 
to  their  tea.  The  women  made  room  for  me  at  the 
table  and  spoke  welcoming  words,  while  the  baker 
himself  looked  at  me  but  said  nothing.  He  was  a 
fine  specimen  of  a  Cornishman  :  old  and  strongly 
built,  with  a  large  perfectly  bald  head,  on  which  he 
wore  a  skull  cap,  and  a  vast  cloud  of  white  hair  which 
covered  the  lower  half  of  his  face  and  flowed  over 
his  chest.  He  had  the  broad  head,  high  cheek-bones, 
large  mouth  and  depressed  nose,  wide  at  the  nostrils,  of 
the  pure  Cornish  Celt,  and,  most  marked  feature  of  all, 
the  shrewd,  prying,  almost  inquisitorial,  yet  friendly, 
blue-grey  eyes.  Those  eyes,  I  observed  out  of  the 
corners  of  mine,  were  furtively  watching  me,  but  I 
did  not  resent  it.  By  and  by  I  caught  sight  of 
another  member  of  the  family  I  had  not  observed 
before  also  watching  me  very  attentively  with  the 
most  brilliant  eyes  in  the  world — a  fine  grey  parrot 
in  a  big  tin  cage  at  the  far  end  of  the  room.  He 
was  standing  at  the  open  door  of  the  cage,  silent  and 
motionless,  with  his  neck  craned  out  in  a  listening 
attitude.  I  went  over  to  him  and  gave  him  some  cake, 
which  he  accepted  in  a  gentle  manner  and  began 
eating.  Then,  coming  back  to  my  tea,  I  began 
praising  the  bird,  saying  that  I  knew  a  lot  about 


CORNISH    HUMOUR  175 

parrots  and  admired  and  respected  them  because  they 
were  nearest  to  our  noble  selves  in  intelligence,  and  that 
I  had  never  seen  a  finer  grey  parrot  than  this  one. 
He  was  silent  with  me  :  that  was  the  parrot's  way  ; 
he  was  like  a  wise  man,  very  still  and  very  observant 
of  a  stranger  in  the  house  ;  he  would  watch  and 
listen  to  know  what  the  strange  person  was  like 
before  declaring  himself. 

The  old  man  did  not  smile  nor  speak  but  got  up, 
went  to  the  cage,  and  taking  the  bird  on  his  hand 
returned  to  his  seat.  Then  began  a  lively  game 
between  the  two  :  the  parrot  climbed  over  and  about 
the  man,  was  snatched  up  and  tossed  as  a  mother 
tosses  her  babe,  and  finally  deposited  on  the  big  bald 
head  from  which  the  skull-cap  had  been  removed. 
The  parrot  rubbed  his  feathered  head  over  the 
shining  pate  and  wiped  his  beak  on  it.  Then  followed 
a"  fight  with  lightning-quick  thrust  and  parry,  a  finger 
and  a  beak  for  weapons,  after  which  the  bird  was 
snatched  up  and  popped,  back  down,  on  the  table. 
There  he  remained  some  time,  perfectly  still,  his  feet 
stuck  up  in  the  air,  but  not  pretending  to  be  dead, 
for  the  brilliant  white  eyes  were  wide  open,  keenly 
watching  us  all  the  time.  Finally  the  bird  twisted  his 
head  round,  and  using  his  beak  as  a  lever  turned 
over  on  his  feet,  and  was  invited  to  kiss  and  be 
friends.  This  the  bird  did,  pushing  his  way  with 
careful  deliberation  through  the  cloud  of  beard  so  as 
to  plant  his  kisses  on  the  lips. 

During  the  performance  I  could  not  help  remark- 
ing a  singular  resemblance  between  man  and  bird  : 


176  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  same  love  of  fun  appeared  in  their  bright,  watchful, 
penetrating  eyes  ;  one  had  as  much  pleasure  in  the 
game  as  the  other  ;  they  were,  man  and  parrot,  very 
much  on  a  level,  very  like  little  children,  and  like 
children  they  were  without  a  sense  of  humour. 

Or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say  that 
children's  humour  is  rudimentary.  Undoubtedly 
there  are  individuals  who  possess  it  in  a  higher  or 
more  developed  state,  just  as  there  are  children 
who  possess  the  sense  of  beauty,  an  ear  for  music, 
and  other  faculties  of  the  adult,  but  such  cases  are 
exceptional. 

It  chanced  that  just  before  my  meeting  with  the 
old  man  of  the  parrot  I  had  been  discussing  the  sub- 
ject of  this  chapter  with  a  gentleman  of  culture  in 
the  district,  a  member  of  an  old  and  distinguished 
Cornish  family,  who  has  worked  in  his  profession 
among  the  people  and  knows  them  intimately.  He 
demurred  to  my  idea  that  his  countrymen  (of  the 
lower  ranks  be  it  understood)  were  without  the  sense 
of  humour,  and  he  instanced  their  "  love  of  fun  "  as 
a  proof  of  the  contrary.  Mere  love  of  fun,  however, 
always  strongest  in  children  and  animals,  is  not  the 
same  thing  as  that  finer,  brighter,  more  intellectual 
sense  we  are  discussing. 

But  how  strong  the  simple  primitive  love  of  fun  is 
in  the  Cornish  people  may  be  seen  at  Christmas  time 
in  St.  Ives  in  their  "  Guize-dancing,"  when  night 
after  night  a  considerable  portion  of  the  inhabitants 
turn  out  in  masks  and  any  fantastic  costume  they 
can  manufacture  out  of  old  garments  and  bright- 


CORNISH    HUMOUR 


177 


coloured  rags  to  parade  the  streets  in  groups  and  pro- 
cessions and  to  dance  on  the  beach  to  some  simple 
music  till  eleven  o'clock  or  later.  This  goes  on  for 
a  fortnight.  Just  think  of  it,  men,  women  and  children 


NORWAY    LANE,   ST.    IVES 

in  their  masks  and  gaudy  get-up,  parading  the  little 
narrow  crooked  muddy  streets,  for  long  hours  in  all 
weathers  !  And  they  are  Methodists,  good,  sober 
people  who  crowd  into  their  numerous  chapels  on 
Sundays  to  sing  hymns  and  listen  to  their  preachers  I 


178  THE   LAND'S   END 

It  is  fun,  pure  and  simple,  and  if  you  mix  with  them 
and  witness  their  gaiety  and  listen  to  their  bantering 
talk  and  happy  laughter  you  will  not  discover  the 
faintest  flicker  of  humour  in  it  all,  and  if  you  have 
witnessed  the  people  of  some  French,  Italian  or 
Spanish  town  amusing  themselves  in  this  fashion,  the 
Guize-dance  will  seem  like  a  poor,  rude  imitation  of 
the  carnival  got  up  by  children. 


At',; 


CHAPTER   XIII 
THE    POETIC   SPIRIT 

The  naturalist's  mind  and  men's  complex  nature — An  eminent  ethnolo- 
K  gist — The  use  of  fools — The  simple  animal  mind — Herring  gull 
and  rock-pipit — Man  and  animals  compared — The  imaginative 
faculty — Cornish  poets — Hawker  of  Morwenstow — Prose  writers 
— Thomas  Carew  —  Purity  of  race  in  Cornwall — Dearth  of 
imaginative  work — A  prosaic  people — Cornwall  and  Ireland  con- 
trasted— Reason  of  difference — Cornish  legends — Mystery  plays — 
Wesley's  mission  and  greatness — Ugliness  of  Methodism — Effect 
on  the  child's  mind. 

THE  naturalist's  mental  habit  of  always  trying 
to  get  at   the  reason  and  hidden  significance 
of  things  is  apt  to  become  a  worry  when  he 
begins  to  look  closely  at  his  fellow-creatures  with  the 
object  of  rinding  out  what  they  really  are,  or  what 
the  character  of  this  particular  human  family  or  herd 
is  compared  with  that  of  some  other  herd  which  he 
has   studied  and    thinks  he    knows.     Or  perhaps   it 
would  be  nearer  the  mark  to  say  that  his  anxiety  to 

"79 


i8o  THE   LAND'S   END 

classify  everything  is  the  source  of  his  trouble,  when 
with  a  Reaumur's  skill  his  curious  mind  would  dis- 
tinguish men  according  to  their  racial  and  tempera- 
mental characters.  It  vexes  his  little  busy  brain, 
which  loves  neatness  and  symmetry,  that  men  are  so 
various,  so  complex,  that  they  have  so  many  hidden 
meanings  and  motives  and  instincts — so  many  in- 
visible threads  in  the  woven  texture  of  their  natures, 
which  occasionally  shine  out,  yellow  and  purple  and 
scarlet  among  the  threads  of  sober  grey,  yet  when 
looked  at  closely,  or  examined  with  a  magnifying-glass, 
become  invisible  again.  Either  he  must  give  up  the 
quest  and  the  task  in  despair  or  else  go  doggedly  on 
with  a  sort  of  stupid  courage,  trying  not  to  think 
that  he  is  blundering  all  the  time.  It  is  consoling  in 
a  difficulty  of  this  kind  to  recall  the  case  of  an  emi- 
nent ethnologist,  who  was  exceedingly  industrious 
and  prolific  and  was  very  great  a  short  generation 
ago,  about  which  time  his  learned  contemporaries, 
vexed  at  his  facile  method  of  overcoming  all  difficul- 
ties, rose  up  against  and  overthrew  him,  smashing 
and  pulverising  his  beautiful  theories.  After  which, 
with  a  very  engaging,  proud  humility,  he  boasted  that 
he  had  been  the  fool  to  rush  in  where  the  angels  (his 
opponents)  had  feared  to  tread,  and  that  to  attack  and 
overthrow  they  had  had  to  follow  him  into  new  and 
wider  fields  where  they  otherwise  would  never  have 
ventured.  We  must  all  be  fools  in  the  same  way,  if  we 
have  a  little  of  that  courage  which  I  have  called  stupid, 
each  in  his  own  small  sphere,  and  we  certainly  do  a 
useful  thing  if,  in  exposing  our  thick  skulls  to 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  181 

knocks  (which  don't  matter),  we  succeed  in  giving 
courage  to  better  men. 

If  I  had  not  been  a  fool,  or  had  not  troubled  my- 
self with  this  serious  question,  it  would  have  been 
much  pleasanter  for  me  in  my  rambles  at  this  end  of 
all  the  land,  seeing  that  the  inferior  animals  are  so 
very  much  simpler  and  more  easy  to  read  than  men. 
Those  donkeys,  for  example,  which  I  meet  on  the 
moor,  and  their  scarcely  less  intelligent  friends  the 
jackdaws,  I  know  them  a  hundred  times  better  than  I 
can  know  any  man — even  my  own  self.  And  the 
house-dog  too,  who  is  supposed  to  be  mentally  more 
like  his  masters  than  any  other  beast — this  dog  who 
watches  my  comings  and  goings  out  of  the  corners  of 
"his  eyes  and  who  thinks  himself  wonderfully  clever 
when,  knowing  that  I  don't  want  him,  he  steals 
secretly  off  an  hour  before  I  go  out  and  meets  me 
(by  chance)  among  the  furze  bushes  a  mile  from 
home — do  I  not  know  every  thought  in  his  curly 
black  head,  if  his  little  mental  trick  of  putting  two 
and  two  together  can  be  called  thought  ?  And  the 
gulls  on  the  cliff— do  I  not  know  just  how  they  will 
comport  themselves  ;  how  each  bird  will  eye  me 
suspiciously,  sideways,  with  one  brilliant  eye  at  a 
time  ;  how  they  will  rise  and  float  and  dwell  on 
the  air,  or  sit  on  a  rock  with  beaks  to  the  wind — do 
I  not  know  every  word  they  will  say  in  their  herring- 
gull  language  ? 

It  is  true  they  will  now  and  then  do  a  thing  which 
will  come  as  a  surprise.  Here  is  an  example — an 
incident  I  have  just  witnessed.  All  day  the  wind  had 


1 82  THE   LAND'S   END 

been  blowing  half  a  gale  from  the  sea  when  I  went 
down  to  the  rocks  to  get  a  good  mouthful  of  air 
before  it  was  dark.  There  were  the  gulls  at  the 
usual  spot  ;  and  no  sooner  had  I  climbed  into  a 
sheltered  nook  among  the  rocks  than  they  were  all 
up  floating  overhead,  swooping  and  rising,  and  pour- 
ing out  their  insistent  loud  anxious  angry  cries.  For 
they  were  just  beginning  to  nest  on  the  ledges  of  the 
cliff  beneath  me  and  were  troubled  at  my  presence. 
In  spite  of  the  very  cold  wind  and  the  growing  ob- 
scurity, when  the  sun  had  gone  down,  I  kept  my 
place  for  upwards  of  an  hour,  and  for  the  whole  of 
the  time  they  continued  soaring  and  screaming  above 
me  :  now  with  extended  motionless  wings  seeming 
not  to  move  yet  mounting  all  the  time,  higher  and 
higher,  until  they  would  be  four  or  five  hundred 
yards  above  me  and  would  begin  to  look  very  small  ; 
then  down  and  down  again  in  the  same  imperceptible 
way,  but  sometimes  descending  with  an  angry  rush 
until  they  were  no  more  than  thirty  or  forty  yards 
high  and  one  bird  among  them  would  make  a  violent 
swoop  to  intimidate  me,  coming  to  within  a  couple  of 
yards  of  my  head  with  loud  swish  of  wings  and 
sudden  savage  scream.  I  noticed  that  the  swoops 
were  all  made  by  one  bird,  that  this  same  bird  acted 
throughout  as  fugleman  and  leader,  that  whenever 
the  others  began  to  drift  away,  further  and  further 
apart,  and  their  cries  grew  fainter  and  less  persistent, 
he  or  she  reanimated  them  and  brought  them  back 
with  a  fresh  outburst  of  fury,  emitting  louder  screams 
and  dashing  down  in  a  more  violent  manner.  The 


THE   POETIC    SPIRIT  183 

longer  I  watched  them  the  more  wonderful  appeared 
the  difference  in  disposition  between  this  one  bird, 
this  white  flying  image  of  wrath,  and  the  others. 

Now  at  intervals  of  about  three  or  four  minutes 
my  attention  would  wander  from  the  gull  to  see  and 
listen  to  a  rock-pipit  that  had  its  home  at  that  spot 
and  was  also  nesting  in  a  chink  quite  close  to  the 
gullery.  Every  day  and  all  day  long,  in  all  weathers, 
the  little  singer  could  be  seen  and  heard  at  that  ex- 
posed spot,  soaring  up  at  intervals  to  a  height  of  a 
couple  of  hundred  yards  ;  then  slowly  falling  back  to 
the  rocks,  head  down,  tail  spread  and  wings  pressed  to 
its  sides  with  the  quills  standing  out — a  shuttlecock 
or  miniature  parachute  in  figure  ;  and  while  descend- 
ing he  emitted  the  series  of  airy  tinkling  sounds  that 
make  his  melody.  And  now,  in  spite  of  the  late- 
ness of  the  hour  and  increasing  gloom  on  the  sea 
and  clouded  sky  and  of  the  cold  wind,  the  little 
creature  would  not  desist  from  its  flight  and  song. 
Its  little  big  passion  was  as  strong  and  inexhaustible 
as  that  of  the  enraged  gull.  Then  occurred  the  in- 
cident I  set  out  to  tell  :  the  gulls  with  their  prolonged 
monotonous  wailing  cries  were  balanced  in  the  air  at 
a  height  of  ninety  or  a  hundred  yards,  their  trumpeter 
and  inspirer  keeping  in  the  centre  of  the  scattered 
company  directly  above  my  head.  The  pipit  shot  up 
from  the  pile  of  rocks  in  which  I  was  lying,  and  ris- 
ing obliquely  from  the  land  side  reached  the  highest 
point  of  its  flight  well  over  the  sea,  and  then  just  as 
it  set  its  feathers  to  begin  its  descent  a  furious  gust  of 
wind  caught  and  whirled  it  landwards,  still  emitting 


184  THE   LAND'S   END 

its  tinkling  sound,  into  the  very  midst  of  the  com- 
pany of  hovering  gulls.  No  sooner  was  it  among 
them  than  the  angry,  alert  leading  bird,  half  closing 
its  wings,  swooped  down  on  the  little  tinkler,  and 
instantly  a  frantic  chase  began,  with  lightning-quick 
doublings,  now  over  the  sea,  now  the  land,  the  gull 
with  its  open  beak  almost  touching  the  terrified  little 
fugitive.  "  Save  yourself,  pipit !  "  I  exclaimed,  for 
another  inch  and  the  small  spotted  singer  would  have 
been  in  the  big  hungry  yellow  beak  and  flight  and 
tinkling  song  ended  for  ever.  And  in  another  mo- 
ment the  tension  was  ended,  for  the  little  thing  had 
gained  the  rocks  and  was  safe  :  but  it  sang  no  more 
that  evening. 

Now,  strange  as  all  this  may  seem — that  the  pipit 
should  live  and  breed  just  by  or  among  the  herring 
gulls,  ready  at  all  times  to  seize  and  devour  any 
living  creature  that  comes  by  chance  in  their  way, 
and  that  it  should  go  on  ascending  and  descending, 
singing  and  singing,  every  day  and  all  day  long,  just 
where  the  gulls  are  perpetually  floating  and  flying 
hither  and  thither,  always  on  the  look-out  for  some- 
thing to  devour — it  is  but  acting  in  accordance  with 
its  known  character.  The  small  bird  is  without  fear 
of  its  big  rapacious  neighbours  :  it  has  its  own  quick- 
ness and  adroitness  to  save  it  from  all  natural  dangers 
of  winds  and  waves  and  killing  birds  ;  it  was  only  the 
rare  chance  of  that  gust  of  wind  striking  it  just  when 
it  paused  in  mid-air  before  dropping,  and  carrying  it 
away  sideways  into  the  midst  of  the  herring  gulls, 
which  so  nearly  cost  it  its  life.  On  the  following 


THE   POETIC    SPIRIT  185 

morning  the  gulls  would  be  there,  flying  about  hungry 
as  ever,  and  the  pipit  would  go  on  with  flight  and 
song  in  the  same  old  way,  free  as  ever  from  appre- 
hension. And  as  with  the  pipits  so  it  is  with  all 
creatures  that  are  preyed  upon  :  sudden  violent  death 
as  the  result  of  any  failure,  or  mistake,  or  slight  acci- 
dent, is  a  condition  of  wild  life,  else  its  vigour  would 
not  be  so  perfect  and  its  faculties  so  bright. 

Every  day,  in  fact,  when  I  am  observing  the  actions 
of  birds,  or  of  animals  generally,  from  a  dog  or  a 
donkey  to  a  fly,  I  may  witness  something  unexpected, 
an  action  which  will  come  as  a  surprise  ;  but  this 
will  be  only  because  of  its  rarity,  or  because  it  comes 
about  through  a  rare  concurrence  of  circumstances, 
but  not  because  the  creature  has  acted  in  any  way 
contrary  to  its  nature. 

It  is  sadly  different  (sadly,  I  mean,  for  the  natural- 
ist) with  regard  to  human  beings.  You  cannot  gen- 
eralise from  the  actions  of  an  individual  as  you  may 
safely  do  in  the  case  of  a  titlark  or  a  gull  or  a  donkey. 
You  study  a  dozen  or  a  hundred,  and  then  begin  to 
think  that  you  have  not  had  a  sufficient  number 
owing  to  the  variety  you  have  noticed,  and  you  study 
a  hundred  more  and  after  all  you  are  still  in  doubt. 
It  may  appear  that,  in  the  last  chapter,  I  have  not 
shown  much  doubt  as  to  the  want  of  a  sense  of 
humour  (as  we  understand  it)  in  the  Cornish.  J 
have  not  ;  but  when  it  conies  to  another  and  a 
greater  faculty — imagination,  to  wit — I  am  not  very 
sure. 

If  it  could  be  taken  for  granted  that  a  people  who 


1 86  THE   LAND'S   END 

have  never  produced  any  artistic  or  literary  work 
worth  preserving  are  without  imagination,  to  use  the 
word  in  its  higher  sense,  as  the  creative  faculty,  the 
question  would  be  a  very  simple  one,  seeing  that  Corn- 
wall has  given  us  nothing  or  next  to  nothing.  Compare 
it  in  that  respect  with  the  adjoining  county,  divided 
from  it  by  a  little  river,  but  distinct  racially  :  what 
lustre  Devon  has  shed  on  the  whole  kingdom  !  how 
many  of  her  sons  are  so  great  in  arms  and  arts,  above 
all  in  literature,  that  we  regard  them  as  among  the 
immortals  ;  and  what  a  multitude  of  lesser  men  who 
have  made  us  richer  in  many  ways  !  Now  as  one 
with  a  very  superficial  knowledge  on  this  subject  I 
have  put  the  following  question  to  the  three  men  of 
my  acquaintance  who  have  the  widest  knowledge  of 
English  poetic  literature  :  "  Has  Cornwall  ever  pro- 
duced a  poet  ? "  and  in  each  case  came  the  quick 
reply,  "Yes,  Hawker  of  Morwenstow."  Now  Hawker 
is  a  great  man  to  us  on  account  of  his  strong  and 
original  character,  but  he  was  a  very  small  poet ; 
I  should  say  that  during  the  last  half-  century 
England  has  always  had  twenty  or  thirty  living 
minor  poets  who  rank  high  above  him.  Finally,  he 
was  not  a  Cornish  but  a  Devon  man,  and  it  there- 
fore struck  me  as  exceedingly  curious  that  I  should 
have  had  that  same  answer  from  the  last  of  the  three 
friends  interrogated,  seeing  that  he  is  himself  a  highly 
accomplished  poet,  a  Devonian  whose  birthplace  is 
just  on  the  borders  of  the  duchy.  The  reply — "  Yes, 
Hawker  of  Morwenstow  "  may  then  be  taken  to  mean 
"  No,  not  one." 


THE   POETIC    SPIRIT  187 

Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be  said  that  Cornwall  has 
contributed  absolutely  nothing  to  literature.  I  have 
already  sung  the  praises  of  Richard  Carew's  work  ; 
but  he  was  a  prose  writer — he  failed  pitifully  when  he 
attempted  verse  ;  he  therefore  stands  on  a  lower  level, 
with  perhaps  two  or  three  more  who  have  written 
good  prose — William  Scawen  and  Borlase,  the  anti- 
quary, may  be  mentioned.  But  there  is  Thomas 
Carew,  the  lyrist,  and  friend  of  Donne,  Suckling  and 
Ben  Jonson — if  he  may  be  called  a  Cornishman.  His 
name  is  not  included  in  Boase  and  Courtney's  monu- 
mental Bibliotheca  Cornubiensis,  in  the  preface  of  which 
work  they  courageously  say,  "  The  writers  of  Corn- 
wall bear  no  inconsiderable  place  in  the  literature  of 
their  country."  But  if  we  take  it  that  this  Carew  was 
a  Cornishman,  though  born  out  of  the  county,  we 
must  admit  that  Cornwall  has  produced  one  good 
poet.  He  does  not  count  for  very  much,  however — 
this  one  poet  who  lived  three  centuries  ago  and  wrote 
half  a  dozen  little  things  that  sparkle  like  diamonds — 
seeing  that  he  was  of  that  class  which  is  never  native, 
of  the  soil.  Even  in  those  old  days  men  of  birth  did 
not  spend  their  lives  at  home  ;  they  attended  the 
court  and  went  forth  wide  in  the  world  wonders  for 
to  see,  and  intermarried  with  families  outside  of  their 
own  class,  so  that,  like  the  Jews  among  us,  they  were 
and  always  are,  racially  as  well  as  socially,  a  distinct 
people  among  the  people.  Norman  and  Saxon  and 
Dane  are  we,  says  the  poet  truly  enough,  and  he  might 
have  added  Celt,  but  the  mixing  process  has  been 
infinitely  greater  in  the  upper  ranks.  The  Cornish 


1 88  THE   LAND'S   END 

people,  I  take  it,  are  Celts  with  less  alien  blood  in 
their  veins  than  any  other  branch  of  their  race  in  the 
British  Islands. 

One  day  in  a  village  street  I  met  a  fine  athletic- 
looking  oldish  man  with  a  very  marked  characteristic 
Cornish  face,  but  painted  by  alien  suns  to  deepest 
brown,  and  that  colour  of  the  tropics  contrasted  oddly 
with  the  bright  blue-grey  eyes  and  reddish-grey  beard. 
He  laughed  when  I  said  that  I  supposed  he  was  a 
stranger  there.  Yes,  a  stranger  in  a  sense,  he  said, 
since  he  had  been  away  over  forty  years,  working  in  the 
mines,  in  America,  Africa  and  Australia.  But  his  forty 
years'  labour  had  not  hurt  him  much  ;  he  felt  young 
still  and  was  going  back  to  Queensland  after  a  little 
look  round.  For  one  thing  he  had  never  touched 
alcohol  in  his  life  and  he  would  like  to  pit  his  strength 
against  that  of  any  man  of  thirty  in  that  village  where 
he  was  born  sixty-seven  years  ago.  Yes,  it  was  his 
own  native  place  which  he  had  come  back  after  forty 
years  to  have  a  look  at.  His  people  were  there  still, 
and  had  been  there  to  their  certain  knowledge  over 
six  hundred  years.  And  I  dare  say,  he  added,  if  we 
knew  all  we  could  say  a  thousand. 

Five  or  ten  thousand  would  perhaps  have  been 
nearer  the  truth.  And  so  it  is  with  the  common 
people  generally.  They  have  become  great  roamers 
nowadays  ;  they  go  forth  in  hundreds  every  year  into 
all  parts  of  the  world,  but  they  appear  to  cherish  the 
old  Cornish  feeling  against  marrying  among  strangers ; 
they  return  after  few  or  many  years  to  find  wives,  and 
that,  I  conjectured,  was  the  old  miner's  motive  in 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  189 

coming  back  to  his  village  "just  to  have  a  look 
round."  One  of  the  saddest  things  in  this  perpetual 
going  and  coming  is  that  a  great  many  men,  young 
and  in  the  prime  of  life,  return  after  contracting 
miner's  disease,  usually  in  Africa  ;  and  though  it  is 
known  to  every  one  that  they  are  doomed  men,  they 
marry  and  live  just  long  enough  to  leave  a  child  or 
two  before  they  are  gathered  to  their  fathers. 

To  return  to  the  main  point.  Is  this  surprising 
dearth  of  the  creative  faculty,  or  of  genius,  in  art  and 
literature  a  good  criterion — does  it  justify  us  in  saying 
that  the  people  are  devoid  of  imagination  ? 

For  an  answer  one  can  only  go  to  the  people  them- 
selves— not  to  those  of  good  birth  who  are  in  a  sense 
foreigners,  or  different  racially  as  we  have  seen,  but 
to  the  true  natives  who  remain  from  generation  to 
generation  on  the  land.  We  are  told  so  often  and  so 
insistently  by  persons  who  speak  with  authority  that 
the  Celts  are  an  imaginative  people  that  we  come  to 
regard  it  as  an  established  fact,  beyond  controversy, 
as  true,  for  instance,  as  that  the  blood  of  a  dark-haired 
person  is  heavier  than  the  blood  of  a  blonde.  It 
consequently  came  to  me  as  a  great  surprise  to  find 
that  a  people  so  markedly  Celtic  as  the  Cornish  were 
the  most  prosaic  I  had  ever  known.  At  first  I  could 
not  quite  believe  that  it  was  so  :  it  was  only  that  I 
was  a  stranger  among  them  and  had  not  yet  found 
the  way  to  the  hidden  romantic  vein  and  poetic  spirit 
in  them.  Gradually  it  was  borne  in  on  me  that  the 
vein  was  not  there,  that  it  had  no  existence — that  my 
wish  and  no  secret  living  spring  or  hidden  treasure  in 


190  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  earth  had  caused  the  hazel  twig  to  dance  and  dip 
in  my  hand.  Or,  if  they  had  it,  then,  like  their  sense 
of  humour,  it  was  of  that  lower  or  undeveloped  root 
kind  discoverable  in  children  and  in  primitive  people. 

Undoubtedly  this  is  contrary  to  the  conclusion  any 
person  would  most  probably  form  on  a  first  and 
superficial  acquaintance  with  the  people,  on  account 
of  their  manner  and  disposition,  in  which  they  differ 
so  greatly  from  the  more  stolid,  slower-moving,  think- 
ing and  speaking  English  peasant.  Nevertheless  in 
the  English  peasant  in  the  north,  south  and  Mid- 
lands, in  spite  of  that  seemingly  mental  and  physical 
heaviness  and  absorption  in  the  purely  material  things 
which  concern  him  in  his  struggle  for  existence,  I 
have  found  that  hidden  vein  of  romance  and  that 
poetic  feeling  which  I  have  failed  to  find  in  West 
Cornwall. 

On  this  subject  I  do  not  venture  to  speak  of  the 
Cornish  people  generally.  There  may  be  important 
differences.  I  have  been  told  that  in  the  more 
easterly  parts,  particularly  in  mining  districts,  the 
people  are  not  of  so  lively,  friendly  and  communica- 
tive a  disposition  as  in  West  Cornwall  ;  but  I  assume 
that  here,  in  Bolerium,  we  get  the  least  mixed,  the 
truer,  Cornishman.  Here  it  seemed  to  me  that  not 
only  with  regard  to  the  aesthetic  faculties,  but  in 
various  other  ways  too,  in  mind  and  disposition,  they 
are  like  children  of  a  larger  growth.  On  this  point 
however,  one  may  very  easily  go  wrong,  since  the 
same  thought  will  sometimes  strike  us  with  regard  to 
other  Celtic  families.  Yet  in  Cornwall  I  could  not 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  191 

get  away  from  the  idea  that  the  child-like  traits  in  the 
character  of  the  people  were  not  merely  a  matter  of 
disposition,  of  the  buoyant  child  surviving  in  the  man, 
but  that  it  marked  a  lower  stage  in  mental  develop- 
ment. This  may  be  wrong  :  but  after  all  what  one 
wants  is  a  working  theory,  and  it  does  not  very  much 


CORNISH    LABOURER 


matter  whether  it  be  true  or  false  so  long  as  it  enables 
us  to  get  over  the  ground. 

When  we  live  with  savages,  or  uncivilised  people, 
it  is  very  much  like  living  with  children  ;  we  get  to 
know  them  as  we  never  know  the  civilised  beings 
we  spend  our  lives  with  although  they  are  our  own 
people.  For  however  unexpected  their  changes  of 
temper  and  actions  may  be,  especially  where  these 
place  us  in  sudden  peril,  we  yet  know  that  they  are 
only  feeling,  thinking  and  acting  in  accordance  with 


192  THE   LAND'S   END 

their  true  natures.  They  are  not  quite  so  simple  and 
easy  to  read  as  the  lower  animals  ;  nevertheless  the 
difference  between  the  uncivilised  and  civilised  man 
is  so  immense  that  we  can  say  of  the  first  that  it  is  as 
easy  to  understand  him  as  it  is  to  understand  a  dog  or 
a  donkey  or  a  child. 

It  may  also  be  observed  that  there  is  a  vast  differ- 
ence in  this  respect  between  the  members  of  separate 
classes  in  the  same  community,  in  spite  of  their  racial 
relationship — between  peasant  and  gentleman  ;  and  it 
may  perhaps  be  taken  as  a  truth  that  complex  con- 
ditions of  life  make  complex  characters.  The  Cornish 
peasant  appeared  to  me  easier  to  understand  than  the 
English,  and,  as  I  imagined,  because  he  was  nearer, 
mentally,  to  the  child.  It  may  even  be  that  the 
greater  sympathy  with  children  of  the  Cornish  people, 
men  and  women,  is  due  to  this  fact  that  man  and 
child  are  nearer  in  mind  than  is  the  case  with  the 
English  people.  They  are  moved  emotionally  in  the 
same  way  as  children  and  are  liable  to  gusts  of  passion, 
and,  like  children,  are  apt  to  be  cruel  in  their  anger. 
They  are  candid,  pliant  and  delighted  to  serve  you 
when  pleased,  but  are  subject  to  petulant  and  stubborn 
fits,  and  will  brood  in  sullen  resentment  for  days, 
meditating  revenge,  for  some  trivial  imaginary  slight. 
And  they  are  intensely  fond  of  things  which  please 
children — gifts,  shows,  gay  colours,  noise  and  excite- 
ment. Here  is  a  little  characteristic  incident  in  which 
we  see  the  bad  stubborn  boy  surviving  in  the  adult. 
The  late  Royal  Academician,  Hook,  was  on  the  sands 
at  Whitesand  Bay  working  at  a  sea-piece  when  two 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  193 

natives  came  up  and  planted  themselves  just  behind 
him.  There  was  nothing  the  artist  hated  more  than 
to  be  watched  by  strangers  over  his  shoulders  in  this 
way,  and  pretty  soon  he  wheeled  round  on  them  and 
angrily  asked  them  how  long  they  were  going  to  stand 
there.  His  manner  served  to  arouse  their  spirit  and 
they  replied  brusquely  that  they  were  going  to  stay  as 
long  as  they  thought  proper.  He  insisted  on  know- 
ing just  how  long  they  were  going  to  stay  there  to  his 
annoyance,  and  by  and  by,  after  some  more  loud  and 
angry  discussion  one  of  them  incautiously  declared 
that  he  intended  standing  at  that  spot  for  an 
hour.  "  Do  you  mean  that  ?"  shouted  Hook,  pulling 
out  his  watch.  Yes,  they  returned,  they  would  not 
stir  one  inch  from  that  spot  for  an  hour.  "  Very 
well  ! "  he  said,  and  pulled  up  his  easel,  then  marching 
off  to  a  distance  of  thirty  yards,  set  it  up  again  and 
resumed  his  painting.  And  there  within  thirty  yards 
of  his  back  the  two  men  stood  for  one  hour  and  a 
quarter,  for  as  they  did  not  have  a  watch  they  were 
afraid  of  going  away  before  the  hour  had  expired. 
Then  they  marched  off  muttering  curses. 

In  all  this,  and  still  more  in  their  occasional 
emotional  outbreaks,  which  when  produced  by  reli- 
gious excitement  are  so  painful  to  witness,  the 
Cornish  are  no  doubt  very  much  like  other  Celts  in 
Britain  ;  but  in  some  things,  with  one  of  which  alone 
I  am  concerned  here — to  wit,  the  imaginative  faculty 
— these  separate  branches  of  the  race  have  diverged 
very  widely  indeed.  The  old  literatures  of  Ireland 
and  Wales  live  to  show  it,  and  in  Ireland,  at  all 


194  THE   LAND'S   END 

events,  this  fountain  of  inspiration  has  never  ceased  to 
flow.  It  is  flowing  copiously  as  ever  now,  and  mak- 
ing us  richer  every  day.  What  is  the  secret  of  this 
great  difference — the  reason  of  this  creative  faculty 
which  has  given  Ireland,  in  spite  of  her  misery,  so 
splendid  a  place  in  our  literature,  which  appears  like  a 
touch  of  rainbow  colour  in  the  humblest  peasant's  mind, 
and  does  not  exist  and  never  has  been  in  Cornwall  ? 
Doubtless  from  that  mixture  of  blood  which  came  to 
pass  in  Ireland  during  those  restless  centuries  of  tre- 
mendous changes,  when  ancient  nations  were  cast  into 
another  mould,  of  emigration  and  conquest  and 
colonisation  ;  and  of  the  fusion  of  races  by  inter- 
marriage of  the  Irish  Celts  with  the  mentally  more 
virile  and  imaginative  invaders  from  the  north.  We 
must  assume,  too,  that  this  fusion  of  blood  did  not 
go  so  far  and  hardly  took  place  at  all  in  Cornwall. 
We  see  that  the  conquerors  left  but  few  and  slight 
traces  of  their  occupancy  in  the  peninsula,  and  the 
presumption  is  that  they  did  not  take  root  in  it,  that 
when  they  had  come  and  conquered  and  had  their 
carousal  of  blood  they  were  glad  to  sail  or  march 
away,  like  William  Gilpin  in  search  of  the  picturesque, 
from  a  country  of  so  barren  and  repellent  an  aspect,  to 
seek  for  a  permanent  resting-place  in  a  softer,  more 
fertile  land.  Lord  Courtney,  in  a  presidential 
address  to  the  Natural  History  and  Antiquarian 
Society  of  Penzance,  said  :  "  While  the  wave  of 
conquest  swept  completely  over  other  parts  of  Eng- 
land, it  only  just  reached  this  part  and  then  receded. 
The  population  of  Cornwall  in  general  has  remained 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  195 

much  more  homogeneous,  much  more  Celtic  in  type, 
than  in  other  parts  ;  and  of  all  Cornwall  there  is  no 
part  like  this  in  which  we  are  met  with  probably  so 
pure  a  breed  of  human  beings." 

The  people  were  left  in  their  rocky  land,  and  what 
they  had  been — an  ancient  crystallised  race  with  the 
imaginative  faculty  undeveloped — they  remained  and 
remain  to  this  day. 

It  has  been  thought  that  because  Cornwall  is  pre- 
eminently the  land  of  strange  beliefs  and  of  old  tales 
and  legends  relating  to  mythical  saints  and  heroes,  to 
giants  and  demons  with  a  great  variety  of  fantastic 
beings — mermaids,  fairies,  pigsies  and  piskies  and 
other  little  people — the  Cornish  are  a  highly  imagin- 
ative people.  These  things  are  old  survivals,  and  are 
of  the  imagination  in  its  childish  or  primitive  stage. 
The  belief  in  all  these  fanciful  beings  is  pretty  well 
dead  and  gone  now  ;  at  all  events,  I  was  unable  to 
find  even  an  old  woman  who  had  anything  to  say 
of  the  old  beliefs  which  was  not  disrespectful.  But 
these  beliefs  undoubtedly  kept  their  hold  on  the 
Cornish  mind  very  much  longer  than  in  any  other 
part  of  the  country,  and  with  these  beliefs  certain 
pagan,  or  Druidical,  observances  were  also  kept  up, 
and  have  only  died  out  within  the  last  thirty  or  forty 
years.  Similar  beliefs  and  observances  were  as 
common  all  over  England  as  in  Cornwall  ;  there  was 
not  a  hill  or  down,  or  lake  or  stream,  or  singular  tree 
or  rock,  which  did  not  have  its  own  special  demon  or 
genius.  All  this  passed  away  with  the  fusion 
of  the  British  Celts  with  a  people  in  a  more 


196  THE   LAND'S   END 

advanced  psychological  stage.  But  although  these 
childish  things  have  been  put  away  so  long,  you  will 
still  find  faint  traces  of  them  everywhere,  even  in 
the  most  Saxon  districts  in  England.  They  inspire 
little  or  no  belief,  but  are  kept  in  memory,  like  old 
ballads,  and  passed  on  from  generation  to  generation. 
In  Cornwall  belief  in  them  continued  to  within  very 
recent  times,  and  they  are  remembered  still.  It  was 
said  not  very  long  ago  by  a  well-known  Penzance 
writer  that  folklorists,  when  they  come  to  Cornwall, 
especially  the  west,  complain  that  the  materials  are  so 
abundant  they  do  not  know  how  to  manage  them. 
Merely  to  enumerate  and  classify  legends  and  beliefs 
in  giants,  little  men,  and  fairies  of  a  dozen  denomi- 
nations, ghosts,  souls,  semi-devils  and  phantoms  of 
divers  sorts,  goblins,  monsters  and  mermaids,  is  more 
than  they  can  do.  A  very  large  number  of  these 
legends,  enough,  one  would  imagine,  to  satisfy  the 
greatest  enthusiast,  have  been  collected  by  Robert 
Hunt  in  his  Popular  Romances  of  the  West  of  England, 
and  by  William  Bottrell  in  Stories  and  Folklore  of  West 
Cornwall,  in  three  series.  There  we  have  it,  or  as 
much  of  it  as  we  want,  a  huge  crude  mass,  the  rough 
material  out  of  which  an  early  literature  might  have 
come  had  there  ever  been  a  mind  capable  of  assimilat- 
ing and  giving  it  literary  form. 

When  the  old  language  was  in  a  moribund  state 
during  the  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  centuries, 
there  appeared  to  be  but  one  man  in  the  county  to 
lament  its  passing — William  Scawen,  who  loved  the 
old  things,  old  usages  and  traditions,  and  who  rebuked 


THE   POETIC    SPIRIT  197 

his  fellow-Cornishmen  for  their  indifference  with  a 
bitter  eloquence.  But  he  did  not  grieve  over  the 
dying  language  on  account  of  any  noble  or  beautiful 
or  otherwise  valuable  work  enshrined  in  it.  The  few 
mystery  or  miracle  plays  and  other  native  produc- 
tions which  existed  (and  exist  still)  were  not  worth 
preserving.  What  troubled  him  was  the  thought 
that  the  old  ways  and  spirit  were  to  a  great  extent 
dependent  on  the  old  tongue.  The  plays  were  value- 
less as  literature  and  were  of  the  same  quality  as  a 
thousand  more  which  were  once  performed  in  most 
parts  of  England,  the  loss  of  which  nobody  regrets, 
but  their  performance  drew  people  together  from  all 
parts  to  the  vast  open-air  theatre,  the  p!an-au-Guare, 
and  in  this  way  whatever  little  romance  and  poetry 
existed  in  the  minds  of  the  people  was  kept  alive. 

A  mightier  change  was  to  come  later,  when  Wesley 
made  his  descent  on  the  county  about  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and  converted  the  people 
wholesale  to  Methodism.  This  was  in  many  ways  the 
very  worst  form  of  religion  for  a  people  of  the  temper 
and  character  of  the  Cornish,  but  it  suited  them  exactly 
at  the  time  it  came  to  them — a  dull  and  stagnant 
period  in  their  history  when  the  Church  was  indiffer- 
ent. They  were  a  highly  emotional  race  and  were 
in  a  starved  condition,  hungry  for  some  great  excite- 
ment, some  outlet  for  their  repressed  natures,  some 
excuse  for  a  mad  outburst,  and  this  gave  it  them — 
these  wonderful  gatherings  of  miners,  fishermen  and 
labourers  on  the  land,  in  the  old  disused  theatres 
under  the  wide  open  sky,  listening  to  that  mysterious 


198  THE   LAND'S   END 

supernatural  man  who  had  it  in  his  power  to  call  down 
God  to  them.     That  same  God  who  had  been  grow- 
ing further  removed  from  their  lives  and  dimmer  in 
their  minds  for  years  and  for  generations,  until  He 
was   little    more  than  one  of  the  Cornish  giants  or 
supernatural  monsters  believed  in  by  the  "old  people" 
— now    once    more    an    awful    stupendous    reality,  a 
gigantic    kite    hovering    on    broad  black  wings   over 
their  congregated  thousands,  his  burning,  rapacious 
eyes  fixed  on  them,  while  from  time  to  time  he  made 
his  little  tentative  swoops  to  set  them  fluttering  and 
screaming.     For   they  were  like  terrified  fowls   and 
chickens  in  a  farm-yard,  each  expecting  and  dreading 
to  be  made  a  victim — each  knowing  that  his  miserable 
soul  might  not  be  saved  until  the  winged  terror  fell 
upon    him  to  grip   and  bury  its  crooked    lacerating 
talons  in  his  flesh.     And  when   the  stoop  and  grip 
came  he  rolled  on  the  ground  bellowing  and  shrieking 
to  the  accompaniment  of  groans  and  sobs  and  piercing 
cries  of  those  around  him.     Dreadful    as   this  was, 
and  horrible  and  loathsome  to  witness  by  any  person 
of  a  decent  or  reverent  mind,  it  was  yet  a  joy  to  them 
and  gave  them  what  they  wanted — a  glorious  emo- 
tional feast.     From  the  days  of  Wesley  to  the  present 
time   these   unseemly   spectacles   have   been  common 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  peninsula, 
as  they  have  been  in  Wales,  and  one  may  be  thankful 
that    the    Irish    kept   the  old   faith,  which    does   not 
permit  such  things,  since  it  saved  them  from  a  like 
degradation. 

I  rejoice,  and  all  who  have  any  respect  and  love  for 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  199 

humanity  will  rejoice,  that  in  Cornwall  at  all  events 
these  exhibitions  are  declining. 

Last  year  one  day  a  Truro  acquaintance  of  mine 
got  into  a  railway  carriage  in  which  were  five  Method- 
ist ministers  returning  from  a  conference  they  had 
been  attending.  They  were  discussing  the  decrease 
in  the  number  of  converts  and  the  decline  of  revivals 
during  the  last  few  years.  One  of  them,  a  stout, 
elderly  person,  said  he  did  not  take  so  pessimistic  a 
view  of  the  position  as  the  others  appeared  to  do. 
He  thought  the  falling  off,  if  there  were  any,  was 
perhaps  attributable  to  the  ministers  themselves,  and 
then  added,  "  All  I  have  got  to  do  is  to  preach  my 
Judgment-Day  sermon  to  set  them  howling."  The 
others  were  silent  for  a  little,  and  then  one  said,  "  Do 
you  think  it  wise  to  say  much  about  everlasting 
punishment  at  the  present  juncture?"  No  one  replied 
to  the  question,  and  after  an  uncomfortable  interval 
they  changed  the  subject. 

One  would  hardly  suppose  that  the  "present 
juncture "  would  be  causing  much  anxiety  in  far 
Bolerium  ;  yet  even  here  in  this  ancient  rocky  fast- 
ness of  Dissent  the  trumpets  of  the  New  Theology 
are  beginning  to  sound  in  some  of  the  chapels.  Meth- 
odism, on  account  of  its  wealth  and  the  perfection  of 
its  machine,  will  be  the  last  of  the  sects  to  feel  the 
impending  changes  ;  but  this  is  a  subject  which  does 
not  concern  us  here,  and  enough  has  perhaps  been 
said  to  show  that  Methodism  with  its  revival  cam- 
paigns and  notion  as  to  the  necessity  of  sudden 
conversion,  accompanied  with  the  outward  visible 


200  THE   LAND'S   END 

signs  of  the  inner  struggle  and  change — sobbings, 
howlings,  contortions  and  Glory  Hallelujahs — is  not 
a  healthy  one  for  so  extremely  emotional  a  people. 

Wesley's  fame  does  not  however  suffer  from  these 
sad  incidental  results  of  his  great  propaganda.  He 
remains  a  very  great  man,  the  greatest  of  all  the  sons 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  one  who  went  about  his  work 
among  Celts  and  Saxons  indifferently  in  a  white  heat 
which  set  men's  hearts  on  fire.  He  had  no  pleasure 
in  seeing  people  carried  so  completely  away  by  their 
feelings  and  behaving  like  lunatics  or  frenzied  wild 
beasts  in  a  cage  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  abhorred  the 
sight  of  such  things  even  as  he  abhorred  Dissent  and 
that  "odious  familiarity  with  the  Deity"  which  grieved 
and  disgusted  his  reverent  mind  in  his  preachers. 
Nor  did  he  consider,  nor  was  it  possible  for  him  to 
know,  in  his  long  strenuous  life,  which  was  but  a 
battle  and  a  march,  as  the  poet  has  said  of  another 
leader  of  men,  while  like  the  wind,  homeless,  with- 
out resting,  he  stormed  across  a  world  convulsed  by 
a  tremendous  religious  awakening  and  excitement 
— he  did  not  know  that  he  was  inflicting  a  deadly 
injury  on  the  Church  which  he  loved  above  all  things 
and  clung  to  all  his  life  long,  and,  finally,  that  in  the 
end  it  would  all  make  for  ugliness. 

This  is  indeed  the  chief  cause  of  the  repulsion 
with  which  Methodism  and  Nonconformity  in  general 
is  regarded  by  those  who  have  the  sense  of  beauty, 
whose  hearts  echo  the  poet's  cry — 

Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty  :  that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know. 


THE   POETIC   SPIRIT  201 

There  is  one  God  ;  but  the  gods  which  men  worship 
are  innumerable  as  the  stars  in  heaven  and  as  the 
sands  on  the  seashore,  and  they  vary  in  character 
even  as  their  worshippers  do.  To  go  back  to  the 
dark  days  of  the  seventeenth  century,  we  see  that 
beauty  and  whatever  was  of  good  report,  which  be- 
came associated  in  the  Puritan  mind  with  the  life  and 
forms  of  worship  of  their  enemies,  was  a  thing  accurst. 
And,  the  human  mind  being  what  it  is,  it  was  but 
natural  that  the  particular  god  of  their  worship  came 
to  be  the  very  god  of  ugliness,  a  despiser  of  beauty 
who  looked  with  jealousy  on  those  who  were  won  by 
it  even  as  he  did  on  those  who  kissed  their  hands  to 
the  rising  moon.  He  was  not  the  God  to  whose  glory 
the  great  fanes  of  England  were  raised.  And  from 
that  far  time  "  of  Oliver's  usurpation  when  all  monu- 
mental things  became  despicable  "  this  same  temper 
of  mind  and  dismal  delusion  has  come  down  to  us  in 
a  hundred  denominations  with  their  temples  of  ugli- 
ness sprinkled  over  all  the  land. 

Any  house  is  good  enough  to  worship  God  in,  is 
a  treasured  saying,  and  it  has  been  remarked  that  no 
place  of  worship  has  ever  been  raised  by  Noncon- 
formity in  England  which  any  person  would  turn 
aside  from  the  road  to  look  at.  This  would  be  too 
little  to  say  of  the  chapels  in  West  Cornwall,  where 
the  principle  of  any-house-good-enough  has  been 
carried  to  an  extreme.  The  principle  may  or  may  not 
be  insulting  to  a  personal  Deity,  mindful  of  man  and 
anxious  that  man  should  do  Him  honour — we  cannot 
know  His  mind  on  such  a  question  ;  but  these  square 


202  THE   LAND'S   END 

naked  granite  boxes  set  up  in  every  hamlet  and  at 
roadsides,  hideous  to  look  at  and  a  blot  and  disfigure- 
ment to  the  village  and  to  God's  earth,  are  assuredly 
an  insult  to  every  person  endowed  with  a  sense  of 
beauty  and  fitness.  You  will  notice  that  a  cow-house 
or  a  barn  or  any  other  outbuilding  at  even  the  most 
squalid-looking  little  farm  in  a  Cornish  hamlet  strikes 
one  as  actually  beautiful  by  contrast  with  the  neigh- 
bouring conventicle.  And  in  a  way  it  is  so,  being 
suited  to  its  purpose  and  in  its  lines  in  harmony  with 
the  surrounding  buildings,  with  the  entire  village 
grouped  or  scattered  round  the  old  church  with  its 
dignified  old  stone  tower,  and  finally  with  the  rocky 
land  in  which  it  is  placed.  From  such  a  building — 
barn  or  cow-house — one  turns  to  the  chapel  with  a 
feeling  of  amazement,  and  asks  for  the  thousandth 
time,  How  can  men  find  it  in  them  to  do  such  things  ? 

The  interior  of  these  chapels  is  on  a  par  with  their 
exterior  appearance.  A  square  naked  room,  its  four 
dusty  walls  distempered  a  crude  blue  or  red  or  yellow, 
with  a  loud-ticking  wooden  kitchen  clock  nailed  high 
up  on  one  of  them  to  tell  how  the  time  goes.  Of  the 
service  I  can  only  say  that  after  a  good  deal  of  ex- 
perience of  chapel  services  in  many  parts  of  England 
I  have  found  nothing  so  unutterably  repellent  as  the 
services  here,  often  enough  conducted  by  a  "  local 
preacher,"  an  illiterate  native  who  holds  forth  for  an 
hour  on  the  Lord's  dealings  with  the  Israelites  in  a 
loud  metallic  harsh  Cornish  voice. 

I  observed  that  as  a  rule  but  few  adults  attended 
the  morning  services  in  the  villages  and  small  towns  ; 


THE   POETIC    SPIRIT  203 

the  women  had  their  housework  to  do  and  dinner  to 
cook  ;  the  men  liked  a  long  rest  on  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing, and  did  not  care  to  wear  their  best  suit  of  clothes 
the  whole  day.  These  all  flocked  to  the  afternoon  or 
evening  services  ;  but  alas  for  the  little  ones  ! — they 
were  all  packed  off  to  chapel  in  the  morning.  Again 
and  again  on  taking  my  seat  in  a  chapel  at  the  early 
service  I  found  myself  in  a  congregation  chiefly  com- 
posed of  children.  What  can  be  the  effect  on  the 
child  mind  of  such  an  interior  and  of  such  a  service — 
the  intolerable  sermon,  the  rude  singing,  the  prayers 
of  the  man  who  with  "  odious  familiarity "  button- 
holes the  Deity  and  repeats  his  "And  now,  O 
Lord  "  at  every  second  sentence — the  whole  squalid 
symbolism  !  One  can  but  say  that  if  any  imagina- 
tion, any  sense  of  beauty,  any  feeling  of  wonder  and 
reverence  at  the  mystery  of  life  and  nature  had  sur- 
vived in  their  young  minds  it  must  inevitably  perish 
in  such  an  atmosphere. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WINTER   ASPECTS   AND   A 
BIRD    VISITATION 

Back  to  the  land — Golden  days  in  winter — Colour  of  dead  bracken — 
Lichen  on  trees  in  winter — Furze  and  bracken  in  winter — A 
New  Forest  memory — Effect  of  rain  on  dead  bracken — An  artist 
in  the  rain — Snow  and  bird  migration  from  the  east — The  birds 
return  east — How  the  migrants  are  received  at  St.  Ives — Birds 
taken  with  fish-hooks — Bush-beating — Dolls  and  gins  for  the  chil- 
dren— Maimed  birds — Wesley  revisits  St.  Ives — A  compassionate 
woman — Story  of  a  robin — Mr.  Ebblethwaite  and  the  gulls — The 
author  follows  Ruskin's  advice. 

HAVING  finished,  not  very  satisfactorily  perhaps 
either  to  myself  or  readers,  with  the  difficult 
subjects  which  occupy  the  last  few  chapters, 
I  returned  with  renewed  zest  to  my  solitary  rambles 
among  the  hills  and  along  the  coast,  particularly  to 
that  most  fascinating  strip  of  country  named  "  Corn- 
wall's Connemara."    It  was  going  back  to  the  land  and 

204 


WINTER   ASPECTS  205 

the  simple  life  in  a  fresh  sense — to  have  moorland 
donkeys  and  conies,  and  daws,  gulls  and  yellow- 
hammers,  instead  of  men  for  company ;  creatures 
whose  lowly  minds  do  not  baffle  us.  I  doubt  if  even 
the  wildest  American  of  the  "  new  school  of  natural 
history  "  would  maintain  that  these  friends  in  fur  and 
feathers  possess  the  faculty  of  imagination  in  any 
degree.  It  was  very  pleasant  and  restful  to  sit  on  a 
granite  boulder  on  the  hillside  and  gaze  by  the  hour, 
thinking  of  nothing,  on  the  blue  expanse  of  ocean 
and  the  more  ethereal  blue  of  the  sky  beyond,  with 
perhaps  a  few  floating  white  clouds  and  soaring  white 
gulls  in  the  void  to  add  to  the  sense  of  height  and 
vastness. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  best  days  in  the 
six  months  from  October  to  March,  which  are  more 
or  less  charged  with  gloom  in  these  northern  realms, 
are  those  rare  days  when  the  sky  is  clear,  the  wind 
still,  and  the  sun  floods  the  world  with  light  and  heat. 
Such  days  are  apt  to  be  warmer  here  than  in  other 
parts  ;  even  the  adder,  hibernating  in  his  deep  dark 
den  beneath  the  rocks,  is  stirred  by  the  heavenly  in- 
fluence, and  crawls  forth  on  a  midwinter  day  to  lie 
basking  in  the  delicious  beams.  And  the  entire 
visible  world,  sea  and  land,  is  a  glittering  serpent, 
its  discontent  now  forgotten,  slumbering  peacefully, 
albeit  with  wide-open  eyes,  in  the  face  of  the  sun. 

Here,  in  such  weather,  the  futility  of  all  our 
efforts,  whether  with  pen  or  pencil,  to  convey  the 
picture  to  another  has  forced  itself  on  me.  Some  of 
the  details  in  a  description  are  visualised  and  remain, 


206  THE   LAND'S   END 

but  refuse  to  arrange  themselves  in  their  proper 
place  and  order,  and  the  result  is  a  mere  confusion. 
I  can  but  go  down  to  a  distance  of  a  mile  or  two 
from  the  hills  and,  turning  my  back  to  the  sea,  look 
at  the  prospect  before  me,  and  omitting  all  the  small 
details  speak  only  of  its  shape  and  colour.  On  the 
right  hand  and  on  the  left  it  stretches  away  to  the 
horizon,  and  it  rises  before  me  up  to  the  rock-crowned 
peaks  and  ridges  of  the  hills,  the  slopes  and  the  moor 
below  splashed  and  variegated  with  dead  heath-brown, 
darkest  green,  and  dull  red,  the  hues  of  heather, 
furze  and  dead  bracken  ;  and  everywhere  among  the 
harsh,  rough,  almost  verdureless  vegetation  appear 
the  granite  boulders  and  masses  of  rock  cropping  out 
of  the  earth.  A  scene  that  enchants  with  its  wildness 
and  desolation  ;  also,  on  wet  days  and  when  the  air 
is  charged  with  moisture,  with  its  novel  and  strikingly 
beautiful  colour. 

The  colour  of  bracken,  living  or  dead — of  a  plant 
so  universal  and  abundant — is  familiar  to  everybody, 
yet  I  would  like  now  to  dwell  at  some  length  on  its 
winter  colour  because  it  is  a  strange  thing  in  itself — 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  hues  in  nature  which  appears 
in  a  dead  and  faded  vegetation  after  the  beech-like 
brilliant  autumn  tints  of  russet,  gold  and  copper- red 
have  vanished,  and  glows  and  lives  again  as  it  were, 
and  fades  and  vanishes  only  to  return  again  and  yet 
again,  right  on  to  the  time  when  the  deep  undying 
roots  shall  thrust  up  new  stems  to  uncurl  at  their  tips, 
spreading  out  green  fresh  fronds  to  cover  and  conceal 
that  mystery,  even  as  we  cover  our  dead,  beautiful  in 


WINTER   ASPECTS  207 

death,  with  earth  and  with  green  and  flowering  plant. 
This  phenomenon  is  common  enough,  but  in  no  place 
known  to  me  is  the  landscape  so  deeply  and  so  con- 
stantly coloured  by  dead  bracken  as  on  these  slopes, 
on  account  of  the  great  abundance  of  the  plant  and 
the  excessive  moisture  in  the  atmosphere. 

In  other  parts  of  the  county  where  trees  grow  a 
curious  effect  of  the  excessive  humidity  is  seen  in 
some  woods,  especially  in  deep  valleys  and  coombes 
sheltered  from  the  winds,  in  which  the  mists  remain 
longest.  Here  you  will  find  the  trees  thickly  clothed 
from  the  roots  to  the  highest  terminal  twigs  with  long 
coarse  grey  lichen  like  that  which  grows  so  abundantly 
on  the  granite  boulders  on  the  slopes  and  the  rocks 
on  the  headlands.  The  trees  are  leafless  but  not 
naked  in  winter  and  look  as  if  covered  with  a  grey 
foliage,  or  grey  with  a  faint  tinge  of  green.  The 
effect  is  not  only  singular  ;  in  walking  through  such 
a  wood  under  the  grey  canopy  of  branches,  and  when 
you  come  out  into  an  open  glade  and  see  the  trees  in 
multitudes  extending  far  beyond  and  all  clothed  in  the 
same  dim  mysterious  unearthly  colour,  you  are  apt 
to  have  the  fancy  that  you  are  in  a  ghostly  wood  and 
are,  perhaps,  a  ghost  yourself. 

Another  singular  and  magnificent  effect  of  dead 
bracken  where  it  flourishes  greatly  among  furze 
bushes  can  be  best  seen  among  the  hills. 

The  first  time  I  particularly  noticed  this  effect  was 
in  April  near  Boldre,  in  the  New  Forest,  a  good  many 
years  ago.  There  was  a  patch  of  furze  about  three  acres 
in  extent,  where  the  big  rounded  bushes  grew  so  close 


208  THE   LAND'S   END 

as  to  touch  one  another  and  appeared  to  occupy  the 
ground  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  plant  life  ;  yet  it 
could  be  seen  that  bracken  had  also  flourished  there 
during  the  previous  summer,  growing  tall  among  the 
bushes  ;  for  now  the  old  dead  and  withered  fronds 
were  everywhere  visible  lying  against  or  mixed  with 
the  dark  massy  spiky  branchlets  of  the  furze.  Only 
it  was  so  shrivelled  and  pale  in  colour,  or  rather 
colourless,  amid  the  mound-like  masses  of  the  dark 
living  green  as  almost  to  escape  the  sight.  The  mind 
at  all  events  took  no  account  of  those  thin  and 
bleached  lace-like  rags  of  dead  vegetable  matter. 

One  day  I  walked  in  this  place  when  it  was-  raining, 
and  after  rain  had  been  steadily  falling  for  several 
hours  ;  but  the  grey  sky  was  now  full  of  light  and  the 
wet  grass  and  foliage  had  a  silvery  brightness  that  was 
full  of  promise  of  fair  weather.  The  rain-soaked  dead 
bracken  had  now  opened  and  spread  out  its  shrivelled 
and  curled-up  fronds  and  changed  its  colour  from 
ashen  grey  and  the  pallid  neutral  tints  of  old  dead  grass 
to  a  beautiful,  deep  rich  mineral  red.  It  astonished 
me  to  think  that  I  had  never  observed  the  effect  be- 
fore— this  marvellous  transformation  of  the  sere  and 
almost  invisible  lace  rags  to  these  rich  red  fabrics  of 
curious  design  spread  upon  the  monotonous  dark 
green  bushes  like  deepest  red  cornelian  or  reddest 
serpentine  on  malachite. 

This  peculiar  beauty  and  richness  of  hue  is  seen 
in  its  perfection  only  while  the  rain  is  falling  and  the 
streaming  water  is  glistening  on  the  surface  of  the 
leaf,  but  is  best  when  the  rain  is  nearly  over  and 


WINTER   ASPECTS  209 

the  clouds  are  full  of  light.  No  sooner  does  the  rain 
cease  than  the  rich  glistening  red  begins  to  grow  dull 
and  fades  as  the  wet  dries.  In  a  little  while,  in  a 
drying  sun  and  wind,  the  red  hue  quite  vanishes 
and  the  fern  is  again  the  old  faded  rag  it  was 
before. 

In  this  part  of  West  Cornwall  there  was  more  furze 
and  bracken  together  than  I  had  ever  seen,  where 
both  plants  grow  in  the  greatest  luxuriance,  unmixed 
with  other  tree  and  bush  vegetation,  and  with  nothing 
among  it  but  the  grey  lichened  rocks  which  served  to 
intensify  the  effect  of  the  intermingled  sombre  green 
and  glistening  rich  red.  Nor  had  I  long  to  wait  for 
the  falling  drops  which  brought  the  loveliness  into 
existence,  seeing  that  it  rains  on  most  days,  and  when 
it  was  mild  and  the  wind  not  too  strong  the  rainy  day 
was  nearly  as  good  as  the  rare  golden  day  of  clear 
skies  and  genial  sunshine. 

On  one  occasion  when  I  was  out  in  the  hills  feast- 
ing my  sight  on  the  beautiful  strange  aspect  of  things, 
when  the  rain  was  so  heavy  and  continuous  that  it 
soaked  through  my  waterproof  and  wetted  me,  I  was 
surprised  to  find  a  lady  artist  at  work  under  a  big 
umbrella.  She  was  one  of  a  colony  of  forty  or  fifty 
artists  in  the  small  town  close  by,  but  the  first  one  I 
had  seen  out  in  that  wild  place  in  wet  weather.  Her 
subject  was  a  small,  rather  squalid-looking  farm-house 
on  the  further  side  of  a  narrow  green  field — one  which 
could  have  been  better  painted  on  a  fine  day.  I  was 
told  that  the  artists  of  this  one  colony  alone  turn  out 
about  a  thousand  landscapes  a  year,  and  I  wondered  if 


210  THE   LAND'S   END 

any  one  had  ever  attempted  to  paint  that  wonderful 
sight  just  at  their  threshold — the  dead  bracken  among 
the  furze  with  the  silvery-grey  rain  on  it. 

On  the  higher  slopes  where  the  furze  is  less  abund- 
ant the  bracken  predominates,  covering  large  areas 
with  its  red  tapestry,  and  on  most  days  throughout 
the  winter  it  keeps  its  deep  strong  colour,  owing  to 
the  excessive  amount  of  moisture  in  the  air.  It  dis- 
appears only  when  the  new  fern  springs  and  spreads  a 
wave  of  monotonous  green  over  the  rough  land  and 
well-nigh  obliterates  all  other  plant  life.  Only  at 
very  long  intervals  there  is  another  winter  aspect  of 
the  hills  and  moors,  when  they  are  whitened  with  a 
heavy  fall  of  snow.  "About  every  ten  years," 
people  say  ;  but  although  the  weather  was  excep- 
tionally cold  in  December,  1906,  I  had  no  hope  of 
witnessing  that  change,  and  going  away  to  spend  my 
Christmas  elsewhere  missed  the  very  thing  I  wanted 
to  see.  It  was  not  so  much  the  sight  of  the  hills  in 
their  ghostly  white  I  desired  as  the  accompanying 
phenomenon  of  the  vast  multitude  of  birds  flying 
from  the  fury  of  winter  ;  for  whenever  a  wave  of  cold, 
with  snow,  comes  over  the  southern  half  of  England, 
the  birds,  wintering  in  myriads  all  over  that  part  of 
the  country,  are  driven  further  west,  and  finally  con- 
centrate on  the  Cornish  peninsula  and  stream  down  to 
the  very  end  of  the  land. 

No  sooner  had  I  gone  away  than  the  bitterly  cold 
weather  with  snow  and  sleet,  which  prevailed  over  a 
great  part  of  the  country  at  Christmas,  swept  over 
the  southern  and  western  counties  and  drove  the 


WINTER   ASPECTS  211 

birds  before  it.  The  first  news  I  had  of  it  was  in  a 
letter,  dated  December  30,  from  a  naturalist  friend, 
Mr.  G.  A.  B.  Dewar,  who  was  staying  on  the  towans, 
overlooking  St.  Ives  Bay,  close  to  Hayle.  "  I  won- 
der," he  wrote,  "  did  you  see  much  of  the  marvellous 
migration  scene  which  took  place  here  on  Friday 
morning  ?  For  hours — till  about  midday — redwings, 
thrushes,  larks  and  fieldfares  streamed  across  St. 
Ives  Bay,  coming  from  the  east.  There  was  a  great 
highway  of  birds,  which  must  have  been  miles  broad. 
We  saw  them  first  from  the  window  as  we  dressed. 
.  .  .  Most  of  the  birds  crossed  the  Bay,  going  to- 
wards Land's  End,  but  thousands  and  tens  of  thou- 
sands dropped  exhausted  among  the  sand  dunes,  or 
towans,  here,  and  among  these  I  found  golden  plover, 
ring  plover,  sanderlings,  lapwings,  etc. — altogether 
an  extraordinary  assemblage.  On  Saturday  morning, 
lasting  till  one  o'clock  p.m.,  the  birds  returned  in  a 
great  highway  east  again.  Mingled  among  them 
were  many  small  birds,  linnets,  etc.  A  most  wonder- 
ful pathetic  scene,  I  assure  you.  I  wondered  if  any 
of  the  travellers  crossed  the  Channel,  or  whether  they 
all  stopped  in  this  extreme  westerly  bit  of  land.  I 
did  not  think  England  had  so  many  fieldfares  and 
redwings." 

On  my  return  a  few  days  later,  I  found  on  inquir- 
ing along  the  coast  that  large  numbers  of  the  birds 
had  appeared  at  the  Land's  End  towards  evening  and 
settled  down  to  roost  in  the  furze  and  heath  and 
among  the  stones.  At  one  house,  I  was  told,  numbers 
of  thrushes  and  starlings  crowded  on  the  window  sills, 


212  THE   LAND'S   END 

and  some  of  them  that  were  stiff  with  cold  were 
taken  in  but  were  found  dead  in  the  morning.  From 
all  I  could  hear  the  migration  appears  to  have  spent 
itself  at  this  spot. 

.  To  me  the  "  pathetic  "  part  of  it  was  the  reception 
the  starved  fugitives  met  with  from  the  good  people 
along  the  coast,  especially  at  St.  Ives  with  its  horn  or 
"  island  "  beyond  the  town  thrust  out  into  the  sea,  a 
convenient  resting-place  for  the  birds  after  flying  across 
the  bay.  My  information  on  the  subject,  which  would 
fill  some  twenty  pages  of  a  blue-book,  was  gathered 
from  men  and  lads,  mostly  fishermen,  who  had  taken 
part  in  the  massacre.  Each  person  buys  a  handful  of 
small  fish-hooks,  manufactured  for  the  purpose  and 
sold,  a  dozen  for  a  penny,  by  a  tradesman  in  the  town. 
Ten  to  twenty  baited  hooks  are  fastened  with  short 
threads  to  a  string,  two  or  three  feet  long,  called  a 
"teagle,"  and  placed  on  a  strip  of  ground  from  which 
the  snow  has  been  cleared.  To  these  strips  of  mould 
or  turf  the  birds  fly  and  seize  the  hooks,  and  so 
blind  to  danger  are  they  made  by  hunger  that  they 
are  not  deterred  by  the  frantic  struggles  of  those 
already  hooked.  Many  birds  succeed  in  freeing 
themselves  by  breaking  the  thread  in  their  struggles, 
but  always  with  that  bit  of  barbed  bent  wire  in  their 
mouths  or  stomachs,  which  must  eventually  cause 
their  death.  In  one  garden  where  food  was  placed 
for  the  birds  and  their  hunters  kept  out,  eleven  dead 
and  dying  birds  were  picked  up  in  one  day  among 
the  shrubs,  all  with  hooks  in  their  gullets. 

One  young  fisherman  told  me  with  great  glee  that 


WINTER  ASPECTS 


213 


he  had  found  two  hooks  besides  his  own  in  the  mouth 
of  a  blackbird  he  had  taken  from  his  teagle. 

This  method  of  slaying  the  small  birds,  most  com- 
mon in  seasons  of  snow  and  frost,  and  practised  with- 


OLD    HOUSES,    ST.    IVES 

out  a  qualm  by  the  pious  natives  of  all  ages  from  the 
small  shiny-faced  boy  to  the  hoary-headed  ancient 
who  can  no  longer  take  his  seat  in  a  boat — a  method 
one  would  imagine  which  even  the  most  hardened 
Italian,  hungering  for  the  flesh  of  robins,  tomtits  and 
jenny  wrens,  would  be  ashamed  to  follow — is  not  the 


2i4  THE   LAND'S   END 

only  cruel  and  brutish  one  practised.  Bush-l>eating 
is  also  common  in  many  of  the  villages  and  hamlets 
along  the  coast  and  in  the  country  generally.  Even 
here  at  this  extreme  end  of  Cornwall,  a  treeless  dis- 
trict, there  are  bits  of  hedge  and  sheltered  spots  with 
a  dense  bush  growth  to  which  birds  resort  in  crowds 
to  roost,  and  these  are  the  places  where  bush-beating, 
or  "  bush-picking  "  as  it  is  often  called,  is  practised. 
It  is  a  favourite  pastime,  men  and  boys  going  out  in 
gangs  with  dark  lanterns  and  sticks  to  massacre  the 
birds.  It  is  a  primitive  sort  of  battue  with  brooms 
and  caps  and  jackets  for  weapons,  and  very  many  of 
the  victims  are  lost  in  the  dense  thicket  or  in  the  sur- 
rounding blackness — little  bruised  and  broken-winged 
birds  left  to  perish  slowly  of  cold  and  hunger  and  of 
their  hurts. 

Even  more  hateful  than  these  battues  and  wholesale 
slaughter  of  the  starving  immigrants  in  times  of  severe 
weather  is  the  little  daily  dribbling  warfare  which  the 
boys  are  permitted  to -wage  at  all  seasons  in  many  vil- 
lages and  hamlets  against  the  birds.  They  are  actually 
encouraged  to  do  it ;  and  it  is  a  common  thing  to  find 
fathers  and  mothers  after  a  visit  to  their  market  town, 
giving  little  hooks  and  wire  and  steel  gins  to  their 
small  boys.  Dolls  for  the  girls  and  steel  gins  for  the 
boys  !  Where  there  is  a  little  strip  of  sand  on  the 
beach  the  gin  is  set,  covered  with  a  little  sand,  and  a 
few  crumbs  strewn  on  it.  One  result  of  this  practice 
is  that  many  little  birds  after  having  been  caught  get 
away  with  the  loss  of  a  leg  or  foot.  Every  day  at 
St.  Ives  I  used  to  see  one  or  more  of  these  poor 


WINTER   ASPECTS  215 

maimed  creatures  —  sparrows,  wagtails,  rock  and 
meadow  pipits,  and  other  species — painfully  hopping 
on  one  foot  or  crawling  with  the  help  of  their  wings 
over  the  ground  in  search  of  food.  Yet  the  boys  and 
men  who  do  these  things  every  day  and  are  not 
rebuked  by  their  pastors  and  masters  are,  or  are  sup- 
posed to  be,  the  spiritual  children  and  descendants  of 
John  Wesley,  who  converted  and  made  them  what 
they  are,  the  most  religious  people  in  Britain ! 
Wesley,  the  most  compassionate  of  men,  who  not 
only  loved  all  creatures  but  actually  believed  that 
they  too,  like  men,  were  destined  to  know  a  future 
life! 

"  One  most  excellent  end  may  undoubtedly  be 
answered  by  the  present  considerations,"  he  said  in 
concluding  a  sermon  on  this  subject.  "  They  may 
encourage  us  to  imitate  Him  whose  mercy  is  over  all 
His  works.  They  may  soften  our  hearts  towards 
the  meaner  creatures,  knowing  that  the  Lord  careth 
for  all." 

I  think  if  he  could  revisit  the  scene  of  his  greatest 
triumph  of  over  a  century  and  a  half  ago  ;  if  he 
could  stand,  perched  like  a  cormorant,  on  the  rocky 
headland  above  the  town  on  a  misty  Sunday  morning 
in  November  or  December,  and  look  down  on  the 
numerous  chapels  and  the  people  in  their  best  black 
clothes  thronging  into  them  ;  if  he  could  listen  to 
their  eager  conversation  as  they  went  and  know  that 
they  were  greatly  concerned  about  the  precise  differ- 
ences between  Methodist  and  Primitive  Methodist, 
between  Wesleyans,  Bible  Christians  and  the  New 


216  THE   LAND'S   END 

Connexion,  with  other  minute  variations  in  form  and 
shades  of  colouring ;  and  if  he  then,  casting  his  eyes 
down  to  where  at  the  foot  of  the  rock  a  faint,  sharp, 
sorrowful  little  note  is  heard  at  frequent  intervals,  he 
should  catch  sight  of  a  maimed  rock-pipit  or  titlark, 
creeping  painfully  about  the  beach  with  the  aid  of  its 
wings  in  search  of  small  morsels  of  food  among  the 
shingle  and  sea-wrack,  his  soul  would  be  filled  with 
exceeding  bitterness.  "  They  do  not  know,  they  never 
knew,  me  !  "  I  think  he  would  turn  away  from  a 
people  who  call  themselves  by  his  name  but  are  not 
his  followers  in  that  which  was  best  in  his  teaching — 
not  in  that  divine  spirit  of  love  and  tenderness  which 
was  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  in  St.  Francis  of  Assisi, 
and  in  all  men  whose  memories  are  sacred  in  the 
earth.  I  think  he  would  pass  away  in  the  sea  mist 
with  a  mournful  cry  which  would  perhaps  be  audible 
to  the  chapel-goers  ;  and  they  would  wonder  at  it 
and  ask  each  other  what  this  strange  fowl  could  be 
that  uttered  a  cry  as  of  a  soul  in  pain. 

It  is  something  to  be  able  to  say  that  not  all  of  the 
inhabitants  are  indifferent  to  these  things.  Even  in 
St.  Ives,  where  bird-killing  is  most  popular  and  a 
wholesale  slaughter  of  the  spent  and  hungry  fugitives 
intoxicates  with  joy  like  a  big  catch  of  pilchards— 
where,  indeed,  bird-killing  appears  like  an  instinct  as 
well  as  a  pastime,  having  come  down  "from  ancientie," 
to  quote  a  phrase  of  Carew — there  are  some  who  are 
revolted  by  it.  I  am  speaking  not  of  visitors  and 
English  residents,  but  of  native  Cornishmen  ;  and  a 
few  of  these  have  begged  me  "  to  do  or  say  something 


WINTER   ASPECTS  217 

to  put  a  stop  to  these  disgusting  barbarities  "  ;  and 
again  they  have  said  to  me,  "  We  can  do  nothing — 
they  abuse  us  because  we  forbid  them  putting  their 
traps  and  hooks  on  our  ground — but  you  can  perhaps 
do  something." 

Of  these  compassionate  persons,  of  different  social 
ranks,  I  will  speak  particularly  of  only  one,  a  very  ten- 
der-hearted woman,  the  wife  of  a  working  man,  a  huge 
fellow  with  the  strength  of  an  ox  ;  and  whenever  the 
winter-driven  birds  arrived  and  were  slaughtered  in 
great  numbers  with  circumstance  of  shocking  cruelty, 
it  was  a  consolation  to  her  in  her  distress  to  think 
that  he,  her  life-mate,  although  a  native  of  the  town, 
had  never  killed  a  bird  in  his  life.  There  was  doubt- 
less a  strain  of  mercy  in  both  of  them.  She  told  me 
of  an  uncle  who  had  inherited  a  house  and  garden 
in  the  town,  where  he  had  spent  his  life,  whose  habit 
it  was  to  take  out  a  basket  of  food  every  day  for  the 
birds.  For  some  two  or  three  years  before  his  death 
one  of  his  little  pensioners  was  a  robin  with  a  crushed 
or  broken  leg  that  lived  in  his  garden,  and  the  woman 
assured  me  that  when  he  was  taken  to  be  buried  this 
bird  followed  the  funeral,  and  was  seen  by  many  of 
those  present  flitting  about  close  to  the  grave.  On 
inquiry  I  found  that  this  story  was  believed  by  many 
persons  in  St.  Ives. 

I  have  spoken  in  this  chapter  of  the  little  crippled 
birds  so  often  seen  in  this  town  and  in  some  of  the 
villages,  and  my  belief  was  that  these  had  all  been 
caught  in  gins  and  had  got  away,  leaving  a  foot  or  leg 
behind.  But  I  occasionally  saw  a  bird  with  a  dang- 


218  THE   LAND'S   END 

ling  leg,  and  could  only  account  for  it  by  supposing 
that  in  such  cases  the  leg  had  been  broken  by  a  stone, 
the  boys  of  the  place  all  being  greatly  addicted  to 
stone-throwing  at  the  birds.  Later  I  discovered  that 
they  were  birds  which  had  been  caught  in  gins  and 
liberated  by  their  captors.  At  least  a  dozen  of  the 
big  boys  who  spend  all  their  leisure  time  in  taking 
birds  with  gins  on  the  sands  at  St.  Ives  assured  me 
that  they  did  not  kill  the  small  birds  they  caught, 
which  were  not  wanted  to  eat.  They  killed  starlings, 
blackbirds,  thrushes  and  some  other  kinds,  but 
liberated  the  wagtails,  titlarks,  robins  and  a  few  other 
small  species.  I  also  found  out  that  when  birds 
arrive  in  vast  numbers  in  a  severe  frost  or  snowstorm 
and  are  caught  with  small  baited  hooks  many  of  the 
smaller  birds  after  the  hook  has  been  taken  from  the 
mouth  or  gullet  are  allowed  to  fly  away.  One  man, 
the  most  enthusiastic  bird-catcher  with  the  teagle  in 
the  place,  after  removing  the  hook  from  the  mouth 
or  gullet  of  the  bird  he  does  not  want,  takes  the  two 
little  mandibles  between  his  thumbs  and  forefingers 
and  wrenches  the  face  open,  then  tosses  the  bird  up 
to  fly  away  to  a  little  distance,  soon  to  drop  down  and 
perish  in  agony.  Small  birds  that  are  not  wanted,  he 
says,  will  sometimes  return  after  being  liberated  and 
get  caught  again  ;  those  he  liberates  will  trouble  him 
no  more. 

These  things  are  perfectly  well  known  to  every  one 
in  the  place,  and  as  this  man  has  not  been  taken 
by  his  fellow-townsmen  to  the  cliff  and  stoned  and 
his  carcass  thrown  into  the  sea  as  food  for  dogfishes, 


WINTER   ASPECTS  219 

but,  on  the  contrary,  as  they  have  friendly  relations 
with  him  and  sit  in  the  same  chapel  on  Sundays  and 
regard  him  as  a  respectable  member  of  the  com- 
munity, one  can  only  suppose  that  nothing  in  the 
way  of  cruelty  to  God's  creatures  can  be  hellish  enough 
to  touch  the  St.  Ives  mind. 

But,  as  we  know,  there  are  some  exceptions,  and 
I  must  now  go  back  to  the  compassionate  woman 
and  to  a  word  she  dropped  when  she  spoke  to  me  with 
tears  in  her  eyes  of  these  cruelties.  "  I'm  sure,"  she 
said,  "  that  if  some  one  living  here,  who  loves  the 
birds,  would  go  about  among  the  people  and  talk  to 
the  men  and  boys  and  not  be  afraid  of  anything  but 
try  to  get  the  police  and  magistrates  to  help  him, 
he  could  get  these  things  stopped  in  time,  just  as 
Mr.  Ebblethwaite  did  about  the  gulls." 

But  who  was  Mr.  Ebblethwaite,  and  what  was  it  he 
did  about  the  gulls  ?  I  had  been  off  and  on  a  long 
time  in  the  place  and  had  talked  about  the  birds 
with  scores  of  persons  without  ever  hearing  this 
name  mentioned.  And  as  to  the  gulls,  they  were 
well  enough  protected  by  the  sentiment  of  the  fisher- 
folk.  But  it  was  not  always  so.  On  inquiry  I  found 
twenty  persons  to  tell  me  all  about  Mr.  Ebblethwaite, 
who  had  been  very  well  known  to  everybody  in  the 
town,  but  as  he  had  been  dead  some  years  nobody 
had  remembered  to  tell  me  about  him.  It  now  came 
out  that  the  very  strict  protection  awarded  to  the 
gulls  at  St.  Ives  dates  back  only  about  fifteen  to 
eighteen  years.  The  fishermen  always  had  a  friendly 
feeling  for  the  birds,  as  is  the  case  in  all  the  fishing 


220  THE   LAND'S   END 

pkces  on  the  coast,  but  they  did  not  protect  them 
from  persecution,  although  the  chief  persecutors  were 
their  own  children.  People,  natives  and  visitors, 
amused  themselves  by  shooting  the  gulls  along  the 
cliff  and  in  the  harbour.  Harrying  the  gulls  was  the 
most  popular  amusement  of  the  boys  ;  they  were 
throwing  stones  at  them  all  day  long  and  caught 
them  with  baited  hooks  and  set  gins  baited  with  fish 
on  the  sands  and  no  person  forbade  them.  Then 
Mr.  Ebblethwaite  appeared  on  the  scene.  He  came 
from  a  town  in  the  north  of  England,  in  broken 
health,  and  here  he  stayed  a  number  of  years,  living 
alone  in  a  small  house  down  by  the  waterside.  He 
was  very  fond  of  the  gulls  and  fed  them  every  day, 
but  his  example  had  no  effect  on  others,  nor  did  his 
words  when  he  went  about  day  after  day  on  the 
beach  trying  to  persuade  people  to  desist  from  these 
senseless  brutalities.  Finally  he  succeeded  in  getting 
a  certain  number  of  boys  summoned  for  cruelty 
before  the  magistrates,  and  though  no  convictions 
followed  nor  could  be  obtained,  since  there  was  no 
law  or  by-law  to  help  him  in  such  a  case,  he  yet 
in  this  indirect  way  accomplished  his  object.  He 
made  himself  unpopular,  and  was  jeered  and  looked 
black  at  and  denounced  as  an  interfering  person,  es- 
pecially by  the  women,  but  some  of  the  fishermen 
now  began  to  pluck  up  spirit  and  second  his  efforts, 
and  in  a  little  while  it  came  to  be  understood  that, 
law  or  no  law,  the  gulls  must  not  be  persecuted. 

That  is  what   Mr.  Ebblethwaite  did.     For  me  it 
was  to  "say  something,"  and  I   have  now   said   it. 


WINTER   ASPECTS  221 

Doing  and  saying  comes  to  pretty  much  the  same 
thing  ;  at  all  events  I  have  on  this  occasion  kept 
Ruskin's  words  in  mind  concerning  the  futility  of 
prodding  and  scratching  at  that  thick  insensible  crust 
which  lies  above  the  impressible  part  in  men  unless 
we  come  through  with  a  deep  thrust  somewhere. 

The  majority  may  hate  me  for  having  followed  this 
counsel,  but  there  will  be  one  or  two  here  and  there 
who  will  applaud  my  courage  for  having  spoken  in 
this  book  of  the  ugly  things  as  well  as  of  the  things 
which  flatter.  And  I  will  add — in  no  boastful  spirit, 
Heaven  knows — that  what  I  have  written  will  not  be 
forgotten  to-morrow,  nor  next  year,  nor  the  year  after, 
but  will  be  read  some  day,  with  a  sense  of  shame,  I 
trust,  by  the  children  of  the  very  men  who  could  do 
something  and  that  now,  but  who  refuse  to  listen 
to  me  and  others,  or  listen  coldly,  when  we  plead  for 
the  birds.  I  refer  to  the  landlords,  who  are  absent  or 
else  shut  up  and  inaccessible  in  their  houses  where 
they  see  nothing  and  hear  nothing  ;  the  local  editors ; 
the  ministers  of  religion  (God  save  the  mark  !)  ;  and, 
above  all,  the  authorities,  and  county  and  borough 
councillors  and  magistrates.  They  are  all  very  careful 
of  their  "  position  "  and  their  "  reputation"  and  cannot 
afford  to  and  dare  not  denounce  or  interfere  with  these 
old  pastimes  or  customs  of  the  people,  to  which  they 
are  attached  and  upon  which  they  look  as  a  right. 


CHAPTER   XV 
A    GREAT    FROST 

A  second  wave  of  cold — Migrating  goldfinches — Increase  in  number 
of"  wintering  birds — Beginning  of  the  frost — At  Zennor — Feed- 
ing the  birds  under  difficulties — A  crippled  robin — Crystal  fruit — 
Prowess  of  a  fox — Fox  and  raven — The  foxes'  larder — Migrat- 
ing ravens — Frosted  window  panes — Starving  birds — Starlings 
going  to  roost — Evening  on  Zennor  Hill — Heath  fires — The  windy 
night — Animism  and  personifications  of  nature — The  end  of  the 
frost. 

THERE  was  no  second  westward  movement  of 
birds    in    the    winter    of    1906-7,    although 
another  and  more  intense  spell  of  cold  weather 
occurred  a  month  after  the  one  described  in  the  last 
chapter.       It  looked  as  if  the   birds   had  exhausted 
their  powers  in   their  long  disastrous  flight   to  and 
from  the  Land's  End,  or  that  some  saving  instinct  had 
failed  to  come  to  them  on  this  occasion.     Doubtless 
many  thousands  had  perished  in  that  journey  over  a 
snow-covered  country  to  the  extremity  of  Cornwall, 

222 


A   GREAT   FROST  223 

and  we  may  suppose  that  when  the  weather  moderated 
the  surviving  millions  redistributed  themselves  over 
the  southern  counties  from  Somerset  to  Kent ;  also 
that  many  birds  had  been  continually  slipping  away 
across  the  Channel.  Many  of  our  migrants,  which 
have  not  a  strict  migration  like  the  swallow  and 
cuckoo,  the  species  which  shift  their  quarters  or  of 
which  considerable  numbers  remain  in  this  country 
throughout  the  year,  do  annually  come  down  in 
batches  to  the  south  and  remain  for  a  month  or  so, 
in  some  cases  until  December,  then  vanish,  and  these 
no  doubt  continue  their  journey  over  the  sea.  Thus, 
every  autumn  there  is  a  migration  of  goldfinches  into 
Cornwall,  many  birds  appearing  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Mount's  Bay  in  September  and  remaining  until 
November.  These  goldfinches  have  a  brighter 
plumage  than  those  which  winter  in  England,  and 
appear  to  form  a  body  or  race  distinct  from  the 
earlier  migrants  having  their  own  seasons  and  perhaps 
a  route  of  their  own. 

To  return  to  the  great  visitation  of  birds  in  Decem- 
ber. I  am  sure  that  very  many  of  these,  exhausted 
by  hunger  and  cold,  dropped  out  of  the  winged  army 
at  the  extremity  of  Cornwall,  and  remained  there  until 
the  end  of  the  cold  season.  At  all  events,  when  I 
returned  to  the  scene  in  January,  1  noticed  a  very 
great  increase  in  the  number  of  wintering  birds,  par- 
ticularly starlings,  larks,  song-thrushes,  fieldfares 
and  redwings.  The  weather  continued  cold  and  rough, 
with  storms  of  wind  and  sleet  and  occasional  flurries 
of  snow,  until  January  21,  when  the  cold  became 


224  THE   LAND'S   END 

intense,  and  that  rare  phenomenon  in  West  Cornwall, 
a  severe  frost,  began,  which  lasted  several  days,  and 
was  said  by  some  of  the  old  natives  to  be  the  greatest 
frost  in  forty  years,  while  others  affirmed  they  had  not 
experienced  anything  like  it  in  their  lives. 

I  was  staying  at  Zennor  at  the  time — that  lonely 
little  village  nestling  among  its  furze  thickets  and 
stone  hedges,  with  the  rough  granite  hills,  clothed  in 
brown  dead  bracken,  before  it  and  the  black  granite 
cliffs  and  sea  behind.  1  had  been  amusing  myself  by 
feeding  a  few  birds  that  came  to  the  door,  and  now 
my  small  company  of  pensioners,  suddenly  grown 
tame,  began  to  interest  me  very  much.  There  was  no 
garden  to  the  house,  which  was  situated  in  the  centre 
of  the  village,  with  the  church  on  one  side  and  the 
inn  on  the  other — nothing  but  the  road,  broadening 
out  into  a  wide  bare  space  on  which  my  window 
looked,  with  a  stone  hedge  and  a  fountain  of  gushing 
water  on  the  other  side,  where  the  people  dipped  their 
buckets  and  the  animals  came  to  drink.  Here  the 
cows  came  on  their  way  to  and  from  the  farm,  and  the 
pigs  and  dogs  and  a  flock  of  geese  ;  and  as  some  of 
these  animals  were  always  about,  they  very  naturally 
helped  themselves  to  the  bread  they  found  in  the 
public  road.  Fortunately  the  ground-floor  window 
had  a  raised  stone  platform  before  it,  surrounded  by 
iron  railings,  and  I  started  putting  out  the  food  for 
the  birds  in  this  area.  The  cows  and  pigs  could  not 
get  in  there,  but  some  of  the  most  intelligent  of  the 
village  dogs  managed  to  get  a  share  by  thrusting  their 
paws  far  in  and  dragging  the  scraps  out,  and  the  geese 


ZENNOR 


To  face  page  274 


A   GREAT   FROST  225 

would  follow  suit,  putting  their  long  necks  between 
the  rails.  The  birds,  however,  fared  better  than 
before  ;  thrushes,  blackbirds,  robins,  dunnocks,  pied 
wagtails,  meadow  pipits  and  one  grey  wagtail  were  the 
usual  feeders  ;  the  daws,  too,  would  occasionally  pluck 
up  courage  enough  to  drop  down  between  the  railings 
and  snatch  up  something. 

One  of  my  guests  was  a  robin  of  exceptionally 
small  size  with  a  withered  leg.  This  bird  was  first 
brought  to  me  one  evening  by  some  of  the  children, 
who  had  caught  it  in  the  schoolroom,  and  thought  I 
would  be  able  to  do  something  for  it.  A  more  piti- 
able object  could  not  be  imagined  ;  it  was  nothing 
but  a  little  feathered  skeleton  ;  the  "  comfortable  little 
red  waistcoat  with  legs  to  it "  was  now  a  sharp  keel, 
but  behind  the  bone  one  could  feel  the  little  muscular 
heart  working  away  violently.  One  leg  was  crushed 
above  the  knee  and  was  now  dead  and  dried,  the 
closed  claws  hardened  into  a  ball.  I  assured  them 
that  nothing  could  be  done  to  save  it,  that  the  most 
merciful  thing  we  could  do  would  be  to  let  it  fly 
away  into  the  bushes,  where  it  would  quickly  fall 
asleep  and  die  without  pain  in  the  intense  cold.  I 
opened  my  hand  and  it  darted  away  into  the  black 
bitter  night,  but  great  was  my  surprise  next  morning, 
when  looking  at  the  company  gathered  at  the  window, 
to  find  the  wasted  little  cripple  among  them,  eagerly 
picking  up  crumbs  !  I  was  foolishly  pleased  to  see  it 
there  ;  nevertheless  it  was  a  pity  that  it  had  survived 
the  night  and  in  the  end  lived  through  the  frost, 
seeing  that  a  hopelessly  injured  and  maimed  bird 


226  THE  LAND'S   END 

is,  like  the  caged  bird,  incapable  of  its  proper 
life,  and  to  any  one  who  can  feel  for  a  bird  is 
better  dead. 

The  second  day  of  the  frost  made  a  wonderful 
difference  in  the  appeal ance  of  the  birds  out  in  the 
fields,  especially  the  starlings.  These  had  now  lost 
all  energy  and  were  seen  everywhere  moving  languidly 
about  over  the  pale  frosty  turf  in  a  hopeless  search 
for  a  soft  place,  while  others  were  found  gathered  at 
some  spot  sheltered  by  a  stone  hedge  from  the  bitter 
north-east  wind,  standing  crowded  together  in  listless 
attitudes,  with  drooping  wings.  By  degrees  the  field- 
fares and  redwings  disappeared.  The  song-thrushes 
which,  next  to  the  starlings,  were  the  most  numerous, 
appeared  to  fare  better  than  the  other  soft-billed 
species,  owing  to  the  abundance  of  snails  in  the  stone 
hedges.  It  was  a  mystery  to  me  how  with  nothing 
but  those  poor  beaks  they  were  able  to  get  them  out. 
Snails  were  exceedingly  plentiful  in  the  crevices  between 
the  stones,  many  of  them  easily  got  at,  but  so  tightly 
were  they  glued  and  frozen  to  the  stone  that  I  could 
not  pull  them  off  with  my  fingers.  They  were  like 
limpets  on  a  rock,  yet  it  was  plain  to  see  that  the 
thrushes  did  get  a  good  many  out  and  so  saved  them- 
selves from  starvation.  Their  anvils  were  everywhere 
near  the  walls,  each  with  its  litter  of  broken  shells 
about  it.  The  hibernating  snails  were  not  only  found 
in  the  stone  hedges  ;  they  were  also  extraordinarily 
abundant  among  the  sandhills  or  towans  at  Lelant 
and  Phillack  on  the  coast  near  St.  Ives.  They  were 
hidden  in  the  sand  at  the  roots  of  the  coarse  marram 


A   GREAT   FROST  227 

grass  growing  on  the  hills.  Here  the  thrushes  had 
less  difficulty  in  getting  them  out,  and  every  stone 
lying  in  the  sand  was  made  use  of.  It  amused 
me  to  find  that  the  favourite  anvil  at  one  spot  was 
a  soda-water  bottle  which  had  been  stuck  deep  in  the 
soft  sand,  leaving  the  round  end  about  two  inches 
above  the  ground.  Its  form  and  the  faint  bluish 
tinge  in  the  clear  thick  glass  gave  it  the  exact 
appearance  of  a  round  lump  of  ice,  but  the  thrushes 
had  discovered  that  it  was  not  ice  but  something  as 
hard  as  stone,  and  being  immovable,  better  suited  to 
their  purpose  than  the  pebbles  and  small  fragments  of 
stone  lying  about  on  the  sand.  All  round  the  useful 
bottle  the  ground  was  thickly  strewn  with  many- 
coloured  broken  snail-shells. 

The  soda-water  bottle  reminds  me  of  the  appearance 
of  a  singular  and  beautiful  form  of  icicle  which  be- 
came common  on  the  water-courses  on  the  second 
and  third  days  of  the  frost.  I  saw  it  chiefly  on  a 
stream  near  Zennor  that  gushes  and  tumbles  over  the 
rocks  on  its  way  to  the  sea  and  is  in  great  part 
almost  covered  with  a  dense  growth  of  dwarf  black- 
thorn, bramble  and  furze  bushes.  Where  the  water 
pouring  over  the  boulders  splashes  the  overhanging 
branches  the  constant  drops  running  down  the  pen- 
dent twigs  grew  into  globular  or  oval  crystals  ;  these 
were  mostly  about  the  size  as  well  as  shape  of  ducks* 
eggs,  pure  as  the  purest  glass,  and  had  the  appearance 
of  a  wonderful  crystal  fruit  hanging  from  stems  on 
the  dark  purple-red  sloe  bushes. 

I  greatly  liked  to  follow  this  same  stream  in  its  swift 


228  THE   LAND'S   END 

downward  course,  as  it  ran  through  the  roughest  bit 
of  ground  in  all  this  roughest  spot  in  West  Cornwall, 
and  where  it  finished  its  course,  rushing  down  through 
a  cleft  into  the  sea,  the  sloping  shore  was  abundantly 
strewn  with  masses  of  granite  lying  everywhere 
among  the  furze  thicket,  a  spot  where  adders  and 
lizards  (the  longcripple,  as  called  here)  are  common 
in  summer  and  a  favourite  refuge  and  dwelling-place 
of  the  fox.  A  fox  belonging  to  this  spot  distim- 
guished  himself  at  one  of  the  small  neighbouring 
farms  at  the  beginning  of  the  cold  spell.  There  were 
two  small  farm-houses  very  little  bigger  than  cottages 
together,  with  nothing  but  a  cart-road  to  divide  them, 
and  each  one  had  its  hen-house  close  by.  The  fox 
came,  and  the  door  not  being  properly  fastened  got  in 
and  succeeded  in  carrying  away  eight  fowls  besides 
injuring  several  more,  without  disturbing  either  the 
inmates  of  the  house  or  the  dogs.  A  few  nights 
later  he  came  again  and  finding  the  door  locked 
turned  his  attention  to  the  second  hen-house.  It  was 
built  of  stone  and  the  door  was  securely  fastened,  but 
it  had  a  thatched  roof,  and  getting  on  it  he  gnawed 
a  hole  big  enough  to  let  himself  in.  The  fowls 
screamed,  the  dogs  barked,  and  the  farmer,  roused 
from  slumber,  jumped  out  of  bed  and  seizing  his 
gun  rushed  out.  Just  as  he  got  up  to  the  hen-house 
he  saw  the  fox  pop  up  out  of  the  hole  in  the  thatch, 
leap  down  and  vanish  into  the  black  night.  Twelve 
fowls  were  found  dead  or  dying  of  their  bites  as  the 
result  of  this  attempt  which  was  not  a  complete 
success. 


A   GREAT   FROST  229 

The  poor  man  was  very  much  cast  down  at  his  loss 
when  I  saw  him  next  day.  "  I've  been  feeding  them 
all  the  winter,"  he  said,  "  and  they  never  laid  an  egg 
until  now,  and  now  just  when  they  begin  to  lay  the  fox 
comes  and  kills  them  !  If  I  go  to  the  gentleman  of 
the  hunt  he  perhaps  gives  me  a  shilling  a  head  at  the 
outside,  and  perhaps  nothing  at  all.  He'll  say,  We're 
very  sorry  for  you,  but  we  can't  do  anything  for  you 
because  the  money  isn't  enough  and  you  should  take 
better  care  of  your  fowls."  He  went  on  in  this 
mournful  strain  for  about  half  an  hour  and  said  that 
what  made  it  seem  worse  to  him  was  the  fact  that  the 
foxes  had  bred  during  the  summer  in  the  rocks  quite 
near  the  farm,  down  by  the  sea,  and  he  never  dis- 
turbed them — never  had  a  thought  against  them  !  I 
agreed  that  it  was  very  hard  lines  and  all  the  rest,  but 
secretly  my  sympathies  were  with  the  fox  rather  than 
with  him  and  his  fowls. 

It  was  certainly  an  almost  incredibly  audacious  act 
on  the  part  of  the  fox,  seeing  that  in  letting  himself 
down  through  the  hole  he  had  made — "  hardly  big 
enough  for  a  cat "  the  farmer  said — he  had  put  him- 
self in  a  trap ;  yet  in  spite  of  the  joyful  excitement  of 
killing  and  of  the  screaming  and  the  fluttering  of  the 
birds  he  became  aware  of  the  danger  he  was  in  and 
made  good  his  escape.  His  mouth  must  have  watered 
for  many  a  day  at  the  recollection  of  the  fowls  he  had 
killed  and  left  behind,  and  in  the  following  month  he 
actually  came  again  one  dark  night  and  made  a  hole 
as  before  in  the  roof  and  then  smelling  danger  made 
off. 


23o  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  day  after  the  second  raid  I  was  down  among 
the  rocks  and  bushes  by  the  sea,  half  a  mile  from  the 
farm,  when  I  heard  the  repeated  angry  croak  of  a 
raven  not  far  away.  He  was  perched  on  a  rock  on 
the  further  side  of  a  gully  a  couple  of  hundred  yards 
from  me,  and  getting  my  binocular  on  to  him  I  was 
surprised  at  his  excited  appearance  as  I  could  see 
nothing  to  account  for  such  a  state.  Presently  he 
rose  up  to  a  height  of  about  a  hundred  yards  in  the 
air,  then  turning  and  letting  himself  go  he  came  down 
like  a  raven  gone  mad,  violently  doubling  about  this 
way  and  that  in  his  descent  until,  nearing  the  ground, 
he  struck  savagely  at  a  fox  which  I  now  perceived  for 
the  first  time.  A  big  gaunt-looking  dog-fox  standing 
motionless  on  a  large  rock  rising  about  three  feet 
above  the  surface.  Just  as  the  raven  made  the  last 
sudden  twist  in  his  flight  and  delivered  his  blow  the 
fox  dropped  flat  down  on  the  stone  as  if  he  had 
dropped  dead,  then,  as  the  raven  rose,  he  got  up  and 
stood  again,  motionless  as  before.  Again  and  again  the 
raven  repeated  the  mad  swoop,  eight  or  nine  swoops 
following  in  quick  succession,  and  on  every  occasion  the 
fox  threw  himself  down  just  as  the  blow  was  struck, 
but  invariably  keeping  his  face  towards  the  assailant 
with  his  mouth  wide  open  and  all  his  dangerous  teeth 
displayed.  Then  the  raven  gave  it  up  ;  he  could  not 
drive  the  fox  from  the  big  flat-topped  rock  on  which 
he  had  placed  himself  apparently  to  defy  the  bird, 
and  he  knew,  I  imagined,  that  he  was  playing  an 
exceedingly  dangerous  game.  The  extraordinary 
manner  in  which  he  twisted  about  in  descending 


A   GREAT   FROST  231 

was  evidently  meant  to  intimidate  and  confuse  his 
enemy  and  enable  him  to  deliver  his  blow  in  an  un- 
expected place,  but  there  was  danger  in  this  method, 
seeing  that  the  least  miscalculation  or  the  slightest 
accident  would  have  placed  him  at  the  mercy  of  the 
savage  beast  hungry  to  get  his  sharp  teeth  into  his 
hated  black  carcass. 

The  bird  rose  high  up  with  a  sullen  croak  and  flew 
away  out  of  sight,  and  only  then  the  fox  quitted  his 
post.  He  did  not  see  me  among  the  rocks  on  my 
side  of  the  gully,  although  I  was  able  to  keep  my 
glass  on  him  all  the  time.  He  came  at  a  quiet  trot 
straight  towards  me,  springing  lightly  from  stone  to 
stone  and  only  dropping  down  to  the  rough  frozen 
ground  when  there  was  no  other  way.  After  tra- 
velling about  a  hundred  yards  in  this  way  he  turned 
aside  at  right  angles  and  went  a  distance  of  about 
forty~yards  straight  to  a  spot  where  a  mass  of  heather 
grew  in  the  cleft  of  a  rock.  Thrusting  his  head  and 
half  his  body  into  the  heather  he  began  digging  and 
presently  pulled  out  something  which  he  had  con- 
cealed there  and  which  he  now  proceeded  to  devour, 
holding  it  down  with  his  paws.  Having  eaten  it  he 
sat  down  and  licked  his  chops,  then  picked  up  the 
crumbs  so  to  speak  and  sat  down  and  licked  his 
chops  once  more.  Evidently  the  meat  had  not  satis- 
fied his  hunger,  for  by  and  by  he  thrust  himself  into 
the  clump  and  began  digging  again,  but  there  was 
no  more,  and  coming  out  he  sat  up  again  and  with 
head  inclining  downwards  remained  for  some  mo- 
ments in  a  dejected  attitude,  revolving  things  in  his 


232  THE   LAND'S   END 

mind  perhaps,  and  then,  perhaps  all  at  once  remem- 
bering that  he  had  another  little  hoard  somewhere 
else,  he  started  up  and  went  off  in  a  new  direction 
with  the  same  quiet  trot  as  before,  jumping  lightly 
from  stone  to  stone,  and  was  soon  lost  to  sight. 

The  raven  I  have  spoken  of  was  one  of  four  that 
haunted  this  part  of  the  coast,  where  they  were  very 
much  hated  by  a  pair  of  kestrels.  One  evening  just 
before  sunset  I  had  a  great  surprise — when  standing  in 
a  field  half  a  mile  from  the  sea  talking  to  a  farmer  a 
flock  of  thirty-two  ravens  flew  over  our  heads.  It 
was  impossible  to  make  a  mistake  in  this  case,  as  the 
birds  were  flying  quietly  and  low,  passing  directly 
over  us  at  a  height  of  scarcely  forty  yards.  Un- 
doubtedly they  were  strangers  from  a  great  distance, 
perhaps  from  the  northern  extremity  of  Scotland,  and 
were  making  a  tour  round  the  whole  island,  but  I  had 
never  heard  of  a  migration  of  ravens  into  Cornwall 
in  winter. 

The  two  coldest  days  during  the  frost  were  the 
one  on  which  I  watched  the  fox  and  the  day  follow- 
ing. In  the  morning  I  had  found  the  large  window 
panes  of  my  sitting-room  thickly  coated  with  a 
beautiful  frost  pattern,  but  the  sky  was  clear  and 
with  the  sun  shining  on  the  window  and  a  big  fire  in 
the  grate  I  thought  it  would  soon  be  gone.  It  con- 
tinued all  day,  although  the  fire  never  went  out ! 
The  birds  were  now  in  desperate  case  :  it  appeared 
as  if  they  had  given  up  searching  for  food  in  despair, 
and  were  now  idly  waiting  for  a  change  or  for  the 
end,  hunched  up  in  Jany  shelter  they  could  find  from 


A   GREAT   FROST  233 

the  deadly  north-east  wind.  The  very  daws  were 
silent  now,  and  dropped  their  wings  like  the  others, 
as  if  they  had  not  energy  enough  to  fold  them  over 
their  backs.  Even  the  wren,  that  most  vigorous 
little  creature,  the  very  type  and  embodiment  of 
cheerfulness,  had  now  too  fallen  into  the  universal 
misery,  and  came  out  of  hiding  languidly  if  it  came 
at  all,  its  feathers  fluffed  out  and  not  a  ghost  of  its 
sharp  angry  little  voice  to  scold  you  with. 

Towards  evening  on  the  second  of  the  two  worst 
days  I  went  out  to  Zennor  Hill  to  see  the  sun 
set  from  the  top  and  watch  the  big  furze  and  heath 
fires  which  were  burning  far  and  wide  on  the  moor. 
On  the  slope  of  the  hill  I  found  a  number  of  small 
companies  of  starlings,  huddled  together  as  usual  by 
a  hedge-side,  making  no  attempt  to  feed,  there  being 
nothing  to  be  got  from  the  iron  earth  ;  and  as  the 
sun  declined  they  began  to  rise  and  fly  away  south- 
wards to  their  roosting-place — a  spot  three  or  four 
miles  inland,  where  a  depression  in  the  moor  is 
covered  with  a  dense  growth  of  old  furze  mixed 
with  blackthorn  and  brambles.  Their  miserable  day 
was  ended  and  numbers  of  small  flocks  of  from  a 
dozen  to  forty  or  fifty  birds  could  now  be  seen 
against  the  sky,  all  directing  their  flight  to  the  same 
point.  It  was  a  strangely  slow  and  laborious  flight, 
and  many  of  the  birds  were  going  for  the  last  time 
to  their  roost.  From  the  summit  where  I  tried  to 
shelter  myself  from  the  fury  of  the  wind  among  the 
large  black  masses  of  granite,  the  scene  I  looked 
upon  was  exceedingly  desolate.  The  brown  moor 


234  THE   LAND'S   END 

stretched  away  inland,  lonely  and  dark,  to  the  horizon. 
There  was  on  all  that  expanse  but  one  small  object 
to  arrest  the  sight — a  frozen  pool  a  couple  of  miles 
away  which  gleamed  like  grey  glass  in  the  level 
beams.  Many  heath  fires  were  burning,  one  not  above 
a  mile  from  the  hill  and  near  enough  for  one  to  see 
the  yellow  flames  running  before  the  wind  and  leap- 
ing a  dozen  to  twenty  yards  high.  The  sun  seen 
through  the  vast  clouds  of  dun  smoke  had  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  globe  of  fiery  red  copper.  After  it 
had  gone  down  and  the  earth  began  to  darken  the 
smoke  took  an  intense  orange  colour  from  the  flames, 
which  seen  against  the  pale  blue  sky  gave  a  dreadful 
magnificence  to  the  scene. 

With  this  picture  in  my  mind  I  went  down  the 
hill,  chilled  to  the  marrow,  thinking  of  the  birds 
asleep  and  occasionally  disturbing  one  as  I  stumbled 
over  the  stones  in  the  dark  and  picked  my  way  among 
the  black  furze  bushes.  Indoors  it  was  very  com- 
fortable, sitting  by  the  fire,  with  the  lighted  lamp 
on  the  table  and  a  book  waiting  to  be  read  ;  then 
supper  and  a  pipe,  but  through  it  all  that  strange  and 
desolate  aspect  of  nature  remained  persistently  before 
my  inner  sight.  I  went  to  bed  and  lay  soft  and 
warm,  covered  with  many  blankets,  but  did  not 
sleep  ;  the  wind  increased  in  violence  as  the  hours 
went  on,  making  its  doleful  wailing  and  shrieking 
noises  all  round  the  house  and  causing  the  doors  and 
windows  to  rattle  in  their  frames.  In  spirit  I  was  in 
it,  out  on  the  hillside  where  the  birds  were  in  their 
secret  hiding-places,  in  the  black  furze  and  heath,  in 


A   GREAT   FROST  235 

holes  and  crevices  in  the  hedges,  their  little  hearts 
beating  more  languidly  each  hour,  their  eyes  glazing, 
until  stiff  and  dead  they  dropped  from  their  perches. 
And  1  was  on  the  summit  of  the  hill  among  the  rude 
granite  castles  and  sacred  places  of  men  who  had 
their  day  on  this  earth  thousands  and  thousands  of 
years  ago.  Here  there  are  great  blocks  and  slabs  of 
granite  which  have  been  artificially  hollowed  into 
basins — for  what  purpose,  who  shall  say  ?  The  rain 
falls  and  fills  them  to  the  brim  with  crystal-clear  water, 
and  in  summer  the  birds  drink  and  bathe  in  these 
basins.  But  they  were  doubtless  made  for  another, 
possibly  for  some  dreadful,  purpose.  Perhaps  they 
were  filled  from  time  to  time  with  the  blood  of  captive 
men  sacrificed  on  the  hill-top  to  some  awful  god  of 
the  ancient  days.  Now  it  seemed  to  me,  out  there  in 
spirit  on  the  hill,  that  the  darkest  imaginings  of  men 
— the  blackest  phantom  or  image  of  himself  which 
he  has  sacrificed  to — was  not  so  dark  as  this  dreadful 
unintelligible  and  unintelligent  power  that  made  us, 
in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being. 

It  was  this  terrible  aspect  of  nature,  as  I  had  seen 
it  on  that  evening,  which  was  uppermost  in  the  mind 
of  the  race  at  an  earlier  stage  of  culture  before  man's 
cunning  brain  had  found  out  so  many  inventions  and 
created  new  and  pleasant  conditions  for  his  own 
species.  When  animistic  promptings  survive  in  him 
he  is  now  apt  to  personify  nature  in  its  milder  bene- 
ficent aspects.  Such  personifications,  fanciful  and 
religious  at  the  same  time,  are  common  in  our 
imaginative  writers,  especially  in  the  poets,  but,  when 


236  THE   LAND'S   END 

lying  awake  that  night,  I  tried  to  recall  the  passages 
I  had  read  just  to  contrast  the  brighter  picture  with 
that  dark  one  in  my  mind,  I  could  only  remember 
one,  in  a  prose  writer,  and  it  was  this  :— 

"Nature  is  now  at  her  evening  prayers,  kneeling 
before  the  red  hills.  On  the  steps  of  her  great 
altar  she  is  praying  for  a  fair  night  for  mariners  at 
sea,  for  travellers  in  lonely  deserts,  for  lambs  on 
moors  and  for  unfledged  little  birds  in  their  nests. 
She  appears  to  me  as  a  Titanic  woman,  her  robe 
of  blue  air  spread  to  the  outskirts  of  the  heath;  a 
veil  white  as  an  avalanche  extends  from  her  head  to 
her  feet  with  arabesques  of  lightning  flame  on  its 
borders.  Under  her  breasts  is  seen  her  purple  zone, 
and  through  its  blush  shines  the  evening  star.  Her 
eyes  are  clear  and  deep  as  lakes,  and  are  lifted  and 
full  of  worship  and  tremble  with  the  softness  of  love 
and  the  lustre  of  prayer." 

Very  curiously  in  this  the  only  poetic  passage  I 
could  recall  the  author's  religion  has  mixed  itself  with 
the  sense  of  a  living  and  intelligent  principle  in 
nature — that  which  at  times  makes  nature  seem  a 
person  to  us.  The  person  may  be  interested  in  or 
indifferent  to  us,  but  is  all-knowing  and  all-powerful 
and  cannot  be  an  intercessor.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
this  sense  or  feeling  in  us,  when  strong,  is  disturbing 
to  the  religious  mind,  producing  as  it  does  the  notion 
of  a  something  unknown  and  uncanny  (probably  the 
devil)  in  nature — something  which  is  ever  trying  in 
all  solitary  places  to  seduce  the  soul  from  a  jealous 
and  watchful  God.  It  was,  I  think,  a  religious  poet 


A   GREAT   FROST  237 

and  an  American  who  wrote  of  the  "dreadful  wilder- 
ness of  mind  " — I  read  it  when  a  boy  : — 

There  is  a  wilderness  more  dark 
Than  groves  of  fir  on  Huron's  shore. 

Many  of  us  have  just  such  visions  of  the  person  that 
nature  is  on  occasions  to  us  :  a  woman-Titan,  a  beau- 
tiful female,  the  mother  of  men  and  of  all  life,  all 
breathing  sentient  things,  and  of  grass  and  flowers  ;  a 
being  in  whom  all  beauty  in  the  visible  world  and  all 
sweetness  and  love  and  compassion  in  a  mother's 
heart  and  in  all  hearts  are  concentrated  and  intensified. 
But  it  is  a  personification  of  a  reclaimed  and  softened 
nature  and  of  the  soft  conditions  of  life  in  which  we 
are  nursed.  My  vision  of  nature  as  a  person  that 
night  had  no  softness  or  beauty  in  it  and  was  not 
woman.  Standing  on  the  hills  I  saw  him  coming  up 
from  the  illimitable  moaning  sea,  riding  on  the  blast 
as  on  a  chariot,  and  he  was  himself  wind  and  cloud 
and  sea  and  land.  He  towered  above  the  granite 
hills,  blotting  out  the  stars  with  his  streaming  hair 
which  covered  the  heavens  like  a  cloud.  I  saw  his 
face,  dark  as  granite,  as  he  rose  up  before  me  and 
passed  over  the  stony  desolate  hills,  and  his  eyes 
gazing  straight  before  him  were  like  two  immense 
round  shields  of  grey  ice  and  had  no  speculation 
in  them.  This  indeed  was  to  my  mind  the  most 
dreadful  thing,  that  this  being,  all-powerful  and  ever- 
lasting, creator  and  slayer  of  all  things  that  live,  of 
all  beauty  and  sweetness  and  compassion,  was  himself 
without  knowledge  or  thought  or  emotion,  and  that 


238  THE   LAND'S   END 

that   which    he    had    made   and   would   unmake  was 
without  significance  to  him. 

If  there  be  nothing  but  this  mechanical  world,  and 
if  the  pure  materialist  even  in  spite  of  his  materialism 
should  invent  for  himself  or  imagine  a  god,  it  would 
be  such  a  one  as  I  beheld  on  that  windy  night. 

So  passed  the  miserable  darkling  hours,  "  as  I  lay 
a-thynkinge,"  and  saw  no  hope  until  I  slept,  and  when 
I  woke  and  the  grey  morning  was  come,  the  wind  had 
fallen  and  the  cold  was  not  so  intense. 

The  frost  continued  that  day  and  the  next,  and 
although  very  cold  with  occasional  storms  of  sleet 
and  snow,  it  was  getting  milder  all  the  time.  The 
change  was  so  gradual  one  could  hardly  feel  it,  but  it 
had  a  great  effect  on  the  birds  ;  they  were  recovering 
very  rapidly,  and  on  the  morning  of  the  2yth,  when 
the  ground  had  once  more  grown  soft  except  in  shady 
places,  my  birds  did  not  turn  up  at  feeding-time  in 
the  morning  :  they  were  back  in  the  fields  getting 
their  natural  food,  which  no  doubt  tasted  best  after 
their  long  abstinence.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  go  out 
again  to  see  the  thrush  standing  up  stiff  and  alert  on 
the  green  turf  in  the  old  way,  and  the  speckled  star- 
lings scattered  about  and  once  more  busily  prodding 
the  turf.  The  daws  rose  up  with  the  old  insolent  ring 
in  their  clamouring  voices,  and  the  wren  was  himself 
again,  briskly  hopping  out  of  his  hiding-place  in  the 
stones  for  a  moment  or  two  just  to  fling  that  sharp 
little  note  of  indignation  at  you  for  disturbing  him— 
"  Go  away — mind  your  own  business  !  " 

The  mortality  had  undoubtedly  been  very  great, 


A   GREAT   FROST  239 

but  a  majority  of  the  birds  died  in  the  night-time, 
dropping  from  their  perches  in  the  close  bushes  and 
dying  in  holes  in  the  hedges,  where  their  bodies 
remained  hidden.  But  they  had  died  in  the  daytime 
too,  and  I  found  their  remains  all  about  the  fields, 
mostly  starlings,  but  dead  redwings  and  thrushes 
were  also  plentiful. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

A    NATIVE   NATURALIST 

The  towans  or  sandhills — Their  destructive  progress  over  the  land — 
Sea  rush  introduced — The  ferry  at  Lelant — Among  the  towans 
— The  meadow -pipit — The  ferryman — Knowledge  of  wild  life 
in  country  boys  and  men — Countryman  and  chaffinch — The 
native  naturalist — A  strange  story  of  a  badger — Great  black- 
backed  gull  and  young  guillemot — Sparrow-hawk  and  curlew — 
Fight  between  a  seal  and  a  conger — Story  of  a  young  seal — An 
osprey — A  great  northern  diver — The  killing  passion  in  sportsmen 
— Story  of  a  meadow-pipit — The  seal  colony  threatened. 

THE  Towans,  as  the  sandhills  or  dunes  on  the 
north-east  side  of  St.  Ives  Bay  are  called — that 
barren    place    mentioned    in    the    last  chapter 
where    a    horde    of   fugitive    thrushes    found    snails 
enough   to  save  them  from  starving — is  a  curiously 
attractive  bit  of  country.     It  is  plainly  visible  from 
St.   Ives,  looking  east  over  the  water — a  stretch  of 
yellow  sands  where  the  Hayle  River  empties  itself  in 
the  Bay,  and,  behind  it,  a  grey-green  desert  of  hum- 
mocky  or  hilly  earth,  where  the  hills  are  like  huge 

240 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  241 

broken  waves  in  "  fluctuation  fixed."  And  in  a  sense 
they  are  waves,  formed  of  sand  which  the  ocean 
brings  out  of  its  depths  and  exposes  at  low  water,  to 
be  swept  up  by  the  everlasting  winds  and  heaped  in 
hills  along  the  sea-front ;  and  no  sooner  are  the  hills 
built  than  the  wind  unbuilds  them  again,  carrying  the 
yellow  dust  further  inland  to  build  other  hills  and  yet 
others,  burying  the  green  farm-lands  and  houses  and 
entire  villages  in  their  desolating  progress.  This,  they 
say,  was  the  state  of  things  no  longer  ago  than  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  some  wise  person  discovered 
or  remembered  that  Nature  herself  has  a  remedy  for 
this  evil,  a  means  of  staying  the  wind-blown  sands  in 
their  march.  The  common  sea  rush,  Psamma  arenarla^ 
the  long  coarse  grass  which  grows  on  the  sand  by  the 
sea,  was  introduced — the  roots  or  seed,  I  do  not  know 
which  ;  and  it  grew  and  spread,  and  in  a  little  while 
took  complete  possession  of  all  that  desolate  strip  of 
land,  clothing  the  deep  hollows  and  wave-like  hills  to 
their  summits  with  its  pale,  sere-looking,  grey-green 
tussocks.  As  you  walk  there,  when  the  wind  blows 
from  the  sea,  the  fine,  dry,  invisible  particles  rain  on 
your  face  and  sting  your  eyes  ;  but  all  this  travelling 
sand  comes  from  the  beach  and  can  do  no  harm,  for 
where  it  falls  it  must  lie  and  serve  as  food  for  the 
conquering  sea  rush.  If  you  examine  the  earth  you 
will  find  it  bound  down  with  a  matting  of  tough  roots 
and  rootlets,  and  that  in  the  spaces  between  the 
tussocks  the  decaying  rush  has  formed  a  thin  mould 
and  is  covered  with  mosses  and  lichens,  and  in  many 
places  with  a  turf  as  on  the  chalk  downs. 


242  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  Towans  occupy  the  ground  on  both  sides  of 
the  estuary.  On  the  south  side  is  the  ancient  village 
of  Lelant,  once  threatened  with  destruction  by  the 
shifting  sands  ;  now  the  square  old  church  tower,  as 
you  approach  it  from  St.  Ives,  is  seen  standing  bravely 
above  the  rush-grown  hills  and  hummocks  made 
harmless  for  ever.  On  the  north  side  of  the  estuary 
is  Hayle,  a  small  decayed  town,  and  the  ancient 
village  and  church  of  Phillack,  and  behind  the  village 
to  the  sea  and  on  either  hand  miles  upon  miles  of 
towans.  There  is  a  ferry  at  Lelant,  and  the  ferryman 
has  his  little  ramshackle  hut  at  the  foot  of  a  sandhill, 
a  little  below  the  church,  and  here  I  often  came  to  be 
rowed  over  to  the  other  side,  where  it  was  wilder  and 
more  solitary.  There  I  could  spend  hours  at  a  stretch 
without  seeing  a  human  being  or  hearing  any  sound 
of  human  life.  From  the  top  of  a  high  towan  I 
could  get  a  fine  view  of  the  Bay,  with  St.  Ives'  little 
town  and  rocky  island  on  the  further  side  ;  while 
looking  along  the  coastline  on  the  right  hand,  the 
white  tower  of  Godrevy  Lighthouse  on  its  rock  was 
seen  at  the  end  of  the  Bay,  and  beyond  it  the  blue 
Atlantic.  Coming  down  from  my  look-out  all  the 
wide  exhilarating  prospect  would  vanish — ocean  and 
Bay  and  distant  town,  with  cliffs  and  hills — and  I 
would  be  in  another  world,  walking  on  the  soft  sand 
and  moss  in  hollow  places  among  the  tall  sere  rushes 
with  their  old  bleached  seed  spikes.  "  They  have  no 
song  the  sedges  dry,"  sings  the  poet,  but  in  his 
heart,  he  adds,  they  touched  a  string  and  for  him 
they  had  a  song.  So  it  was  with  these  dry  rushes  ; 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  243 

they  touched  a  string  in  me,  and  that  low,  rustling, 
sibilant  sound,  and  mysterious  whispering  which  the 
wind  made  in  them,  was  to  me  a  song.  There  was 
not  even  a  bird  voice  to  break  the  silence,  except 
when  I  disturbed  a  meadow-pipit  and  it  rose  and  flew 
to  this  side  and  that  in  its  usual  uncertain  way,  utter- 
ing its  sharp,  thin,  melancholy  note  of  alarm — a  sound 
which  serves  to  intensify  the  feeling  of  wildness  and 
to  give  an  expression  to  earth  in  lonely  desert  places. 
In  my  visits  to  the  Towans  I  had  a  double  motive 
and  pleasure  :  one  in  communing  with  nature  in  that 
"  empty  and  solitary  place,"  the  other  in  talking  with 
the  ferryman  who  took  me  to  and  fro  across  the  river: 
he  was  a  native  of  the  place,  a  pure  Cornishman  in 
appearance  and  disposition,  and  a  naturalist.  I  do  not 
say  a  "  born  naturalist "  because  I  fancy  we  are  most 
of  us  that,  and  yet  the  countryman  who  is  a  naturalist 
is  a  rarity.  As  a  rule,  what  he  knows  about  nature 
and  wild  life  is  the  little  that  survives  in  his  memory 
of  all  he  learnt  in  his  boyhood.  He  learns  a  good  deal 
then,  when  the  mind  is  fresh,  the  senses  keen  and  the 
ancient  hunting  and  exploring  instincts  most  active. 
In  woods  and  wilds  the  naked  savage  ran,  and  the 
civilised  boy  still  preserves  the  old  tradition,  and  as 
he  runs  he  picks  up  a  good  deal  of  knowledge  which 
will  be  of  no  use  to  him.  If  he  is  a  country  boy  of 
the  labouring  class  he  no  sooner  arrives  at  an  age  to 
leave  school  and  idling  and  do  something  for  a  living 
than  the  change  begins — a  change  which  is  like  a 
metamorphosis.  However  small  a  part  he  is  called 
on  to  fill,  though  he  be  but  a  carter's  boy,  it  serves  to 


244  THE   LAND'S   END 

open  a  new  prospect  to  his  mind,  and  to  give  him  a 
new  and  absorbing  interest  in  life.  His  work  is  the 
most  important  thing  in  the  world  :  he  ponders  on  it, 
and  on  the  money  it  brings  him  ;  on  the  tremendous 
question  of  food  and  clothing  and  shelter  ;  and  by 
and  by  on  love  and  marriage  and  children  to  follow  ; 
on  the  struggle  to  live  and  the  great  difference  that 
a  shilling  or  two  more  or  less  per  week  will  be  to 
him.  One  effect  of  all  this  is  to  make  the  interests 
and  occupations  of  his  early  years  appear  trivial  ; 
his  days  with  wild  nature  were  all  idle  and  useless 
and  the  knowledge  of  animal  life  he  acquired  of  as 
little  consequence  as  that  of  the  old  boyish  games. 
The  country  youth  would  perhaps  be  astonished  if 
he  could  be  conscious  of  the  change  going  on  in  him, 
or  if  some  one  were  to  tell  him  that  the  mental 
images  of  things  seen  and  heard  in  nature  will  soon 
grow  dim  and  eventually  fade  out  of  his  mind.  It 
is  really  surprising  to  find  how  far  this  dimming  and 
obliterating  process  will  go  ;  for  here  (let  us  say)  is  a 
man  whose  whole  life  is  passed  amidst  the  same  rural 
scenes,  who  has  seen  and  heard  the  same  bird  forms 
and  sounds  from  infancy,  who  knew  them  all  as  inti- 
mately as  he  knew  his  mother's  face  and  voice  in  his 
early  years,  and  yet  he  has  ceased  to  know  them  ! 
All  because  he  has  not  renewed  or  refreshed  the  early 
images  ;  because  his  mind  has  been  occupied  with 
other  things  exclusively,  and  his  faculty  of  observation, 
with  regard  to  nature  at  all  events,  has  practically 
ceased  to  exist. 

An  amusing  instance  of  this  state  of  mind  occurs 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  245 

to  me  here.  I  was  staying  in  a  small  rustic  village 
in  the  cottage  of  one  of  the  most  interesting  men  I 
have  met.  He  was  a  working  man,  better  educated 
than  most  of  his  class,  and  at  the  age  of  sixty-five 
had  saved  enough  to  buy  a  plot  of  ground  and  build 
himself  a  little  house  with  his  own  hands  in  which  to 
spend  the  remnant  of  his  life  without  further  labour. 
But  he  was  of  an  active  mind  and  an  enthusiast  in- 
flamed with  one  great  idea  and  hope,  which  was  to  raise 
the  people  of  his  own  class  to  a  better  position  and  a 
higher  life — morally  and  intellectually — to  make  them, 
in  fact,  as  sober,  righteous,  independent  and  wise  as  he 
was  himself.  And  as  he  was  a  man  of  character  and  cour- 
age, and  gifted  with  a  kind  of  eloquence,  he  had  come 
to  be  very  widely  known  and  greatly  respected ;  he  had 
even  been  led  to  fight  a  hard  fight  in  a  populous 
borough  as  a  Labour  candidate  for  Parliament.  He 
had  lost  but  was  not  in  the  least  soured  by  defeat 
and  was  still  a  leader  of  men,  a  sort  of  guide,  philo- 
sopher and  friend  to  very  many  of  his  own  class, 
especially  in  matters  political.  Finally,  he  was  a  man 
of  a  noble  presence,  large  and  powerfully  built,  with 
a  genial  open  countenance  and  a  magnificent  white 
beard — a  sort  of  Walt  Whitman  both  in  appearance 
and  temper  of  mind,  his  love  of  humanity,  his  toler- 
ance and  above  all  his  unshakable  faith  in  a  glorious 
democracy. 

All  this  about  my  leader  of  working  men  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  subject  under  discussion,  but 
I  could  not  resist  the  temptation  of  giving  a  portrait 
of  the  man. 


246  THE   LAND'S   END 

One  bright  spring  day  I  was  with  him,  pacing  his 
garden  walk,  discussing  a  variety  of  important  matters 
relating  to  man's  spiritual  nature,  and  so  forth,  when 
by  and  by  we  drifted  into  other  themes — wild  nature, 
and  then  wild  bird  life.  "  There  is,"  he  said,  "  one 
curious  thing  about  birds  in  which  they  differ  from 
other  creatures  and  which  makes  them  a  little  more 
puzzling  to  a  man  with  just  the  ordinary  knowledge 
of  nature.  They  have  wings  to  carry  them  about 
and  they  roam  from  place  to  place  so  that  at  any 
moment  a  man  may  be  confronted  with  a  bird  of  a 
perfectly  unfamiliar  appearance.  Or  he  may  hear  a 
cry  or  song  which  he  has  never  heard  before,  and  in 
such  a  case  he  can  only  say  that  the  bird  must  be  a 
stranger  in  that  locality — a  wanderer  from  some  dis- 
tant place.  But  one  would  always  like  to  know  what 
the  bird  is  ;  it  adds  to  the  interest,  and  I  have  very 
often  wished  when  seeing  or  hearing  some  such  strange 
bird  that  some  one  like  yourself,  with  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  all  the  species  in  our  country,  had  been 
with  me  to  satisfy  my  curiosity." 

Just  as  he  was  finishing  a  chaffinch  flew  down  and 
vanished  into  the  dense  foliage  of  a  young  horse- 
chestnut  tree  growing  a  dozen  yards  from  where  we 
stood,  and  no  sooner  had  it  come  down  than  it  burst 
out  in  its  familiar  loud  ringing  lyric. 

He  started  round  and  held  up  his  hand.  "  There  !  " 
he  exclaimed  when  the  bird  ended  his  song.  "  A  case 
in  point !  Now  can  you  tell  me  what  bird  was  that?" 

"  A  chaffinch,"  I  said. 

He  looked  sharply,  almost  resentfully,  at  me,  think- 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  247 

ing  it  a  poor  joke  on  my  part,  and  when  I  smiled  at 
his  expression  he  was  more  put  out  than  ever.  But  I 
could  not  help  admiring  him  as  he  stood  there  staring 
into  my  face.  He  had  put  down  his  spade  when  our 
talk  began  ;  his  coat  was  off,  his  cloudy  old  brown 
waistcoat  unbuttoned,  his  blue  cotton  shirt-sleeves 
rolled  up  to  the  elbows,  his  hands  and  arms  smeared 
with  dried  clay — a  grand  figure  of  a  man  with  the 
white  beard  mixed  with  a  little  red  falling  to  his 
waist,  his  grey  old  shapeless  felt  hat  thrust  back  on 
his  head  and  his  long  hair  down  to  his  shoulders. 

He  assured  me  with  dignity  that  if  there  was  a 
bird  he  was  familiar  with  it  was  the  chaffinch,  that  as 
a  person  born  and  bred  in  the  country  he  could  not 
make  a  mistake  about  such  a  bird.  Nevertheless,  I 
returned,  the  bird  we  had  heard  was  a  chaffinch,  and 
familiar  as  he  was  with  such  a  bird  he  could  not  put 
his  knowledge  against  mine  in  such  a  case.  He 
assented  but  still  felt  dissatisfied.  "  You  will  allow,  I 
suppose,"  he  said,  "  that  there  are  great  differences 
in  individual  singers  and  that  some  one  bird  may  be 
so  different  from  the  generality  as  to  deceive  one  who 
is  not  an  ornithologist  as  to  its  species." 

He  was  right  there,  I  said,  and  that  consoled  him, 
and  he  concluded  that  this  particular  bird  had  uttered 
an  unusual  sort  of  song  which  no  person,  not  a 
trained  naturalist,  would  have  identified  as  that  of  a 
chaffinch. 

It  was  not  so,  but  I  let  it  pass,  and  he  was  glad  to 
get  back  to  other  higher  subjects  where  he  was,  so  to 
speak,  on  his  native  heath  and  could  be  my  guide. 


248  THE   LAND'S   END 

This  may  appear  an  extreme  case  :  I  do  not  think 
so  :  I  have  conversed  about  the  creatures  with  too 
many  rustics  and  country  people  of  all  denominations 
to  think  it  anything  out  of  the  common — scores  and 
hundreds  of  rustics  all  over  the  country,  and  if  1 
want  to  hear  something  fresh  and  interesting  I  go  to 
the  boy  and  not  to  his  stolid  father,  or  hoary-headed 
less  stolid  grandfather,  who  have  both  pretty  well  for- 
gotten all  they  once  knew. 

Of  course  there  are  exceptions,  especially  among 
gamekeepers,  although  in  a  majority  of  cases  their 
observation  is  of  that  baser  kind  which  concerns  itself 
solely  with  the  things  that  profit.  But  there  is  also 
the  nobler  kind  of  observer,  the  one  in  a  thousand 
whose  keen  boyish  interest  in  all  living  things  is  not 
lost  when  he  is  called  on  to  take  a  part  in  the  serious 
business  of  life.  Ceasing  to  be  a  boy  he  does  not 
put  away  this  boyish  thing,  this  secret  delight  in 
nature  which  others  outlive.  It  is  in  him  like  the 
memory  of  a  first  love,  the  image  of  a  vanished  form 
which  endures  in  the  mind  to  extreme  old  age  and  out- 
lasts and  has  a  lustre  beyond  all  others.  It  is  this 
surviving  feeling  of  the  boy  which  makes  the  native 
naturalist,  the  man  with  keen  observant  eye  and 
retentive  memory  ;  and  however  illiterate  he  may  be, 
or  unsocial  in  disposition,  or  uncouth  or  repellent  in 
manners,  it  is  always  a  delight  to  meet  him,  to  conquer 
his  rudeness  or  reserve  and  to  listen  to  the  strange 
experiences  garnered  in  his  memory. 

In  the  chapter  on  Cornish  imagination  something 
was  said  about  the  actions  of  animals,  even  of  those 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  249 

we  are  most  familiar  with,  which  come  as  a  great  sur- 
prise, and  I  gave  an  account  of  one — an  incident  I  wit- 
nessed of  a  rock-pipit  which,  caught  by  a  violent  gust 
of  wind  just  at  the  moment  when  its  wings  being  set 
for  the  gliding  descent  to  earth  could  not  be  used  to 
resist  the  current,  was  blown  away  into  the  midst 
of  a  band  of  hovering  herring  gulls  and  very  nearly 
lost  its  life.  One  knows  that  one  will  never  witness 
just  such  an  incident  again,  but  there  will  be  others 
equally  unexpected  and  strange  for  the  watcher.  In 
the  course  of  this  book  I  have  related  a  few  :  one  of 
a  gannet  falling  from  a  great  height  like  a  stone  into 
the  sea  just  by  the  side  of  a  herring  gull  floating  on 
the  surface,  and  one  of  a  fox,  standing  like  a  carved 
figure  on  a  big  rock,  savagely  attacked  by  a  raven  and 
refusing  to  be  driven  from  its  stand. 

Here  I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  introduce 
an  incident  of  this  kind,  but  far  more  wonderful  than 
any  one  I  have  related  in  this  or  any  other  book, 
which  was  witnessed  not  by  a  naturalist  but  an  artist, 
my  friend  Mr.  R.  H.  Carter,  of  the  Land's  End.  He 
was  with  his  friend,  the  late  Rev.  F.  C.  Jackson,  Rector 
of  Stanmore,  who  used  to  take  his  holidays  in  West 
Cornwall  and  was  himself  something  of  an  artist. 
They  were  sketching  one  day  on  the  huge  cliffs  of 
Tol-Pedn-Penwith,  near  the  Land's  End,  when  Mr. 
Carter  noticed  that  some  animal  had  been  recently 
scratching  the  earth  at  the  foot  of  a  huge  pile  of 
rocks  near  where  he  was  sitting.  There  was  a  large 
hollow  place  under  the  rock  into  which  one  could  see, 
as  there  was  an  opening  on  a  level  with  the  ground 


250  THE   LAND'S   END 

on  one  side,  and  it  struck  him  that  a  badger  had 
taken  refuge  in  this  cavity,  and  had  been  obliged  to 
scratch  a  little  earth  away  to  squeeze  his  body  in. 
He  called  his  companion's  attention  to  it,  and  get- 
ting down  on  the  turf  and  lying  flat  so  as  to  bring 
their  eyes  on  to  a  level  with  the  floor  they  gazed 
into  the  cavity.  They  could  see  no  animal,  but  the 
light  was  dim  inside,  and  Mr.  Jackson  proceeded  to 
twist  up  half  a  dozen  wax  matches  into  a  small  com- 
pact ball,  which  he  lighted  and  then  carefully  pushed 
in  right  to  the  middle  of  the  hollow  space.  The 
burning  wax  made  a  good  light,  but  still  they  could 
see  no  creature,  only  at  one  side,  a  foot  or  so  from 
the  light,  there  was  a  dark  patch  which  they  could 
not  make  out ;  it  was,  they  imagined,  a  hole  in  the 
rock  which  showed  black.  Presently,  as  they  gazed 
in,  still  trying  to  penetrate  into  that  dark  hole  with 
their  sight,  a  paw  was  seen  to  emerge  and  move 
towards  the  light  until  the  whole  foreleg  of  a  badger 
was  revealed  ;  then  the  paw  scraped  up  a  little  loose 
soil  from  the  floor  and  carefully  drew  or  jerked  it 
over  the  burning  ball  of  wax  and  put  the  light  out. 

They  had  both  witnessed  the  whole  action,  and  by 
and  by  with  a  long  stick  or  pole  they  succeeded  in 
ousting  the  badger  from  his  niche  in  the  little  cave. 
Had  they  not  done  so  the  sceptical  reader  might 
have  said  that  what  they  had  seen  was  an  illusion — 
that  they  were  looking  for  a  badger  and  expecting  to 
see  one  and  had  badger  on  the  brain  so  to  speak  ; 
and  by  and  by  when  a  slight  moving  shadow  caused 
by  the  flickering  flame  made  its  appearance  it  took  the 


A   NATIVE    NATURALIST  251 

form  of  a  badgers  paw  and  leg  in  their  sight,  and 
when  the  flame  expired  they  imagined  that  the  illusory 
paw  had  extinguished  it.  I  dare  say  that  if  such  an 
incident  had  been  related  by  the  Canadian,  Charles 
Roberts,  or  by  any  of  the  writers  of  the  "  new  or 
romantic  school "  of  natural  history  in  America,  it 
would  be  set  down  by  most  readers  as  an  unusually 
wild  invention  of  the  author. 

The  ferryman  had  no  such  wonderful  story  to  tell 
when  we  compared  notes,  and  I  intend  here  to  relate 
only  a  few  of  the  curious  incidents  he  had  witnessed, 
and  this  mainly  for  a  purpose  of  my  own.  They 
were  mostly  little  tragedies. 

One  summer  day  when  he  was  out  in  his  boat 
fishing  for  pollack  at  his  favourite  ground  a  mile  or 
two  beyond  the  Godrevy  Lighthouse  he  noticed  three 
guillemots  near  him,  one  old  bird  with  its  half-grown 
young  one,  and  a  second  young  bird  which  accom- 
panied the  others  but  kept  at  a  little  distance  from 
them.  This  young  guillemot  had  doubtless  been  lost 
or  left  by  its  parents.  There  was  no  other  bird  in 
sight  except  a  great  black-backed  gull,  flying  idly 
about,  now  making  a  wide  circle  and  occasionally 
dropping  on  to  the  water  to  examine  some  small 
floating  object,  then  flying  off  again.  He  appeared 
to  pay  no  attention  to  the  guillemots,  nor  they  to 
him,  and  it  therefore  came  as  a  great  surprise  when 
all  at  once  in  passing  over  the  three  birds  he  dropped 
down  upon  the  second  young  guillemot  and  seized  it 
before  it  had  time  to  dive.  The  captive  struggled  in 
vain,  sending  forth  its  shrill  cries  for  help  far  and 


252  THE   LAND'S   END 

wide  over  the  still  sea,  while  the  great  gull,  sitting  on 
the  surface,  proceeded  in  a  leisurely  manner  to  de- 
spatch and  then  devour  his  victim,  tearing  it  to  pieces 
with  his  big  powerful  yellow  beak. 

He  told  me  of  several  other  little  tragedies  of  the 
kind  which  he  had  witnessed  with  surprise,  one  of 
a  curlew  which  at  the  moment  of  flying  past  him  was 
suddenly  chased  by  a  sparrow-hawk  and  pressed  so 
hard  that  it  dashed  down  to  the  beach,  where  it  was 
instantly  grappled.  The  ferryman  made  all  haste  to 
the  spot,  and  the  hawk  flew  off  at  his  approach, 
leaving  the  curlew  dead  and  bleeding  on  the  sands. 
He  picked  it  up  and  took  it  home  to  eat  it  himself. 
But  of  all  these  cases  the  one  of  the  great  black- 
backed  gull  impressed  him  the  most  on  account  of  the 
casual  way  in  which  it  came  about,  just  as  if  the  gull 
had  been  taken  by  a  sudden  impulse  to  drop  upon 
and  slaughter  the  young  guillemot.  Such  an  incident 
serves  to  show  how  perilous  a  world  the  wild  creature 
exists  in  and  on  how  small  a  matter  its  safety  often 
depends,  and  it  also  gives  the  idea  of  an  almost  un- 
canny intelligence  in  the  birds  that  live  by  violence. 
No  doubt  the  gull  was  tempted  to  fall  on  that  young 
bird  solely  because  of  its  keeping  a  little  apart  from 
the  other  two,  because  it  had  no  parent  of  its  own  to 
protect  it. 

The  rocks  to  the  north  of  St.  Ives  Bay  are  an  ancient 
haunt  of  the  common  seal,  one  of  the  few  colonies  of 
this  animal  now  left  on  the  south  coast  of  Britain. 
The  ferryman  was  one  day  fishing  in  his  boat  at  this 
point  close  to  the  mouth  of  that  vast  cavern  in  the 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  253 

rocks  where  the  seals  have  their  home,  when  a  loud 
barking  cry  or  roar  made  him  jump  in  his  boat,  and 
looking  round  he  caught  sight  of  a  seal  thrusting  his 
head  and  half  his  body  out  of  the  water  with  a  conger 
about  seven  to  eight  feet  long  fastened  to  his  ear. 
The  blood  was  streaming  from  the  seal's  head  and  he 
was  trying  to  shake  his  enemy  off  and  at  the  same 
time  turning  round  and  round  in  his  efforts  to  bite 
the  conger  ;  but  the  black  serpentine  body  wriggled 
and  floated  out  of  his  reach,  and  in  a  very  few 
moments  they  went  down.  Again  and  again  they 
rose,  the  seal  coming  out  each  time  with  the  same 
savage  cry,  shaking  himself  and  biting,  the  conger 
still  holding  on  with  bull-dog  tenacity.  But  on  the 
last  occasion  there  was  no  cry  and  commotion  ;  the 
conger  had  lost  his  hold  and  the  seal  had  him  by 
the  middle  of  the  body  in  his  jaws.  On  coming  up 
he  swam  quietly  to  the  sloping  rock  close  by,  and 
half  in,  half  out  of  the  water  began  tearing  up 
and  devouring  his  victim,  the  blood  still  running  from 
his  own  head. 

He  had  another  seal  story  which  interested  me  even 
more  than  the  last,  since  the  chief  actor  and  conqueror 
in  this  instance  was  the  nobler  animal  man,  the  seal 
being  the  victim. 

In  the  early  autumn  of  1907  there  were  mighty 
winds  on  this  coast,  with  tremendous  seas  and  very 
high  tides,  which  made  it  impossible  to  use  the  ferry  ; 
but  when  the  weather  moderated  and  the  ferry- 
man took  to  his  boat  once  more  he  came  upon  a 
young  seal,  which  had,  no  doubt,  taken  refuge  in  the 


254  THE   LAND'S   END 

Hayle  estuary  and  was  lost  from  its  parents.  The 
days  went  by  and  it  did  not  leave  the  river  :  the 
mother  seal  had  not  found  it,  and  apparently  the 
poor  young  thing  had  no  sure  instinct  to  guide  it 
across  St.  Ives  Bay  to  the  seal  caverns  in  the  cliffs 
to  the  north  of  the  lighthouse,  which  was  probably  its 
birthplace.  And  probably  finding  itself  very  lonely 
in  the  estuary,  it  came  by  and  by  to  look  on  the 
man  in  the  boat,  who  was  always  there,  as  a  sort 
of  companion — perhaps  as  a  seal  of  curious  habits, 
which  looked  a  little  like  an  adult  seal,  but  pro- 
gressed in  a  somewhat  different  manner,  keeping 
always  to  the  surface  of  the  water  and  swimming 
with  the  aid  of  two  long  wing-like  fins.  But  it 
appeared  to  be  a  good-natured  seal,  and  always  re- 
garded the  orphaned  youngster  with  a  mild  and  wel- 
coming expression.  First  it  watched  the  ferryman 
from  a  little  distance,  then  approached  him  every  time 
he  appeared,  then  began  to  follow,  coming  nearer  and 
nearer,  and  would  swim  behind  the  boat,  quite  close, 
just  as  a  spaniel  or  other  water-loving  dog  will  swim 
after  its  master's  boat. 

This  was  a  delightful  experience  to  the  ferryman, 
and  the  sight  of  the  dog-like  creature  swimming  after 
the  boat  was  also  an  entertainment  to  the  passengers 
and  a  cause  of  surprise  to  many.  But  there  was 
nothing  remarkable  in  its  action  ;  the  seal,  like  the 
dog,  is  a  social  creature  ;  it  is  well  known  that  he 
readily  grows  tame  towards,  and  even  attached  to, 
the  human  beings  he  is  accustomed  to  see  who  do 
not  persecute  him.  The  old  Cornish  author,  Borlase, 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  255 

refers  to  this  character  of  the  seal,  which  he  classes 
with  his  "Quadruped  Reptiles,"  in  the  following 
quaint  passage  :  "  Whether  it  is  delighted  with  music 
or  any  land  voice,  or  whether  it  is  to  alleviate  the 
toil  of  swimming,  it  shows  itself  almost  wholly  above 
the  water  frequently,  or  near  the  shore,  ibid.  Add  to 
this  that  the  great  docility  of  the  creature  (little  short 
of  that  of  the  human  species)  and  his  being  so  easily 
trained  to  be  familiar  with  and  obedient  to  man,  may 
make  us  with  some  grounds  conclude,  that  this  is 
the  creature  to  which  imagination  has  given  the  shape 
of  half-fish  half-man,  a  shape  nowhere  else  to  be 
found/' 

The  estuary  attracts  a  good  number  of  wild  fowl, 
duck  and  shore  birds,  in  winter,  and  as  a  consequence 
is  much  frequented  by  sportsmen.  One  day  the 
ferryman  took  one  of  these  gentlemen,  a  visitor  from 
a  distance,  across  the  river,  and  was  not  half-way 
over  before  the  seal  appeared  as  usual  and  with  its 
head  well  up  swam  after  the  boat,  and  gaining  quickly 
on  it  was  soon  not  more  than  an  oar's  length  from 
the  stern.  The  ferryman,  looking  back,  was  watching 
it,  and  by  and  by,  thinking  it  would  be  a  pleasant 
surprise  to  the  other,  he  remarked,  "  My  baby  seal  is 
just  behind  you,  coming  after  us."  The  other  looked 
around,  and  instantly,  before  the  boatman  could  cry 
out  or  even  divine  his  intention,  threw  up  his 
gun  and  fired  and  the  brains  of  the  young  seal  were 
scattered  on  the  water.  "You  have  killed  my  pet 
seal— the  animal  I  loved  best,"  the  boatman  cried, 
and  the  other  was  surprised  and  expressed  regret. 


256  THE   LAND'S   END 

He  wished  he  had  known  it  was  a  pet  seal  ;  he 
wouldn't  have  killed  it,  no,  not  for  anything,  if  he 
had  only  known.  And  why  had  he  not  been  warned  ? 
and  so  on,  until  he  stepped  out  of  the  boat  and  went 
his  way  with  his  gun. 

He  had  not  been  warned  because  in  spite  of  all 
the  ferryman  had  seen  of  sportsmen  and  their  ways 
he  never  imagined  that  any  one  would  have  done  so 
brutal  a  thing  or  that  the  murderous  shot  would  have 
been  fired  so  quickly. 

He  also  told  me  about  an  osprey  which  appeared 
one  autumn  at  the  estuary.  It  was  the  first  bird  of 
its  species  he  had  ever  seen,  and  when  it  first  appeared, 
flying  high  in  the  air  and  hovering  directly  over  his 
hut  where  he  kept  a  number  of  fowls  and  turkeys, 
he  became  alarmed  for  their  safety,  thinking  it  was  a 
kite  or  other  large  destructive  hawk.  By  and  by 
the  strange  bird  sailed  away  and  began  circling  above 
the  water,  coming  lower  down,  then  after  hovering  at 
one  spot  like  a  kestrel  for  some  moments  he  saw  it 
drop  into  the  water  and  rise  with  a  good-sized  fish  in 
its  talons.  Then  he  knew  that  the  strange  big  hawk 
was  the  famous  osprey. 

For  some  days  it  displayed  its  magnificent  powers 
to  all  who  came  to  the  water-side,  exciting  a  great 
deal  of  interest  ;  then  one  of  the  sporting  gentlemen 
succeeded  in  getting  a  shot  at  it  and  wounding  it 
badly.  But  it  did  not  drop  ;  it  was  watched  flying 
laboriously  away  over  the  moor  until  out  of  sight 
and  was  never  seen  again. 

Another  season  he  had  a  great  northern  diver  in 


A   NATIVE   NATURALIST  257 

the  river,  and  this  bird  after  a  week  or  ten  days  lost 
its  wildness  and  took  no  notice  of  the  ferryman, 
although  he  sometimes  rowed  his  boat  to  within  forty 
yards  of  it  to  watch  its  movements  when  it  was  fish- 
ing. The  sportsmen  he  ferried  across  wanted  to 
shoot  the  diver,  but  he  prevented  them.  Then  one 
gentleman  told  him  that  he  would  hire  a  boat  and  go 
out  and  shoot  it,  in  spite  of  him.  He  said  that  a  bird 
so  destructive  to  fish  should  not  be  allowed  to  live  in 
the  river.  The  ferryman  said  he  would  prove  to 
him  that  the  diver  was  doing  no  harm,  and  rowing 
him  out  to  where  the  bird  was  diving  at  its  usual 
feeding-ground  they  watched,  and  presently  saw  it 
come  up  with  a  small  green  crab  in  its  beak.  The 
sportsman  was  convinced  that  the  bird  was  not  taking 
fish,  and  gave  his  promise  that  he  would  not  shoot  it. 
However,  a  day  or  two  later  it  was  shot  at  by  one  of 
the  sportsmen  and  badly  wounded  in  the  side,  and  from 
that  time  the  sight  of  it  was  a  constant  pain  to  him  as 
it  moved  continually  round  and  round  in  a  circle  when 
attempting  to  swim  and  was  hardly  able  to  dive. 
Finally  he  took  his  gun  and  put  it  out  of  its  misery. 

The  young  seal,  the  osprey,  the  great  northern 
diver  were  but  a  few  of  the  creatures  he  told  me  of, 
which,  when  living,  were  a  source  of  delight  to  every 
one  who  watched  them,  whose  lives  had  been  wan- 
tonly taken  in  the  estuary  by  gentlemen  sportsmen. 
Stories  equally  sad  and  shocking  were  told  me  by 
other  lovers  of  nature  and  observers  of  wild  life  at 
other  points  on  the  coast,  of  how  every  rare  and 
beautiful  species,  every  owl,  buzzard,  harrier,  chough, 


458  THE   LAND'S   END 

hoopoe  and  many  other  species,  had  been  slaughtered 
by  men  who  call  themselves  sportsmen  and  gentle- 
men. How  is  one  to  explain  such  a  thing — this  base 
destructive  passion — unless  it  be  that  the  gentleman, 
like  the  gamekeeper,  cannot  escape  the  reflex  effect 
on  his  mind  of  the  gun  in  his  hand  ?  He  too  has 
grown  incapable  of  pleasure  in  any  rare  or  noble  or 
beautiful  form  of  life  until  he  has  it  in  his  hands — 
until  he  has  exercised  his  awful  power  and  blotted 
out  its  existence.  And  how  hard  of  heart  the  exercise 
has  made  him  ! 

One  afternoon  at  Wells-by-the-Sea  I  entered  into 
conversation  with  a  sportsman  I  found  sitting  on  a 
grassy  slope,  where  he  was  waiting  for  the  wild  geese 
which  would  come  in  by  and  by  from  feeding  to 
roost  on  the  sand  spit  outside.  He  was,  physically, 
a  very  fine  fellow  in  his  prime,  tall,  athletic-looking, 
with  a  handsome  typical  English  face  of  that  hard 
colour  which  comes  of  an  open-air  life,  with  the 
hard  keen  eyes  so  often  seen  in  the  sportsman. 
Talking  with  him  I  discovered  that  he  was  also  a 
man  of  culture,  a  great  traveller,  a  reader  and  a  col- 
lector of  rare  and  costly  books  on  certain  subjects, 
especially  on  the  forms  of  sport  he  loved  best.  It 
was  impossible  for  me  not  to  admire  him  as  he 
sat  there  reclining  idly  on  his  rug,  thrown  on  the 
green  slope,  smoking  his  pipe,  his  gun  lying  across 
his  knees,  his  big  black  curly -haired  retriever 
stretched  out  at  his  side.  And  at  intervals,  as  we 
talked,  a  little  meadow-pipit,  the  only  other  living 
creature  near  us,  flitted  out  of  the  grass  and,  rising  to 


A   NATIVE    NATURALIST  259 

a  height  of  twenty  or  thirty  feet,  hovered  over  the 
still  water  beneath,  as  if  to  get  a  better  view  of  us, 
to  find  out  what  we  were  doing  there  ;  and  as  it 
hovered  before  us  it  emitted  those  sharp,  sorrowful 
little  call-notes  which  have  such  a  charm  for  me.  And 
every  time  the  small  bird  rose  and  hovered  before  us 
the  dog  raised  his  head  and  watched  it  excitedly,  then 
looked  up  into  his  master's  face.  Then  the  little 
thing  with  an  anxious  mind  would  drop  back  on  the 
turf  again  and  go  on  seeking  its  food  as  before,  so 
near  to  us  that  we  could  distinctly  see  its  bright  eyes 
and  thin  little  pale  brown  legs  and  all  the  markings 
and  shadings  of  its  pretty  winter  plumage — the  olive- 
browns  and  dull  blacks,  the  whites  and  the  cream 
faintly  tinged  with  buff  on  the  striped  breast. 

By  and  by  I  got  up  and  strolled  away  to  the  dunes 
on  the  sea-front,  and  when  I  had  gone  about  seventy 
or  eighty  yards  a  shot  rang  out  behind  me.  Glancing 
back  I  saw  that  the  sportsman  had  also  got  up  and 
was  now  walking  to  a  point  among  the  dunes  where 
he  had  planned  to  lie  in  wait  for  the  geese.  The 
retriever  was  some  distance  behind,  playing  with 
something  ;  and  then,  instead  of  following  his  master, 
he  came  on  to  me,  and  seeing  that  he  was  carrying 
something  I  stooped  down  and  drew  it  from  his 
mouth.  It  was  the  titling — the  little  meadow-pipit ; 
its  anxious  little  question  and  challenge  had  been 
answered  with  an  idle  charge  of  shot  when  it  flew  up 
and  hovered  before  the  man  with  a  gun. 

I  suppose  that  his  motive,  if  he  had  one,  was  to 
give  his  dog  a  few  minutes'  amusement  in  retrieving 


260  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  shattered  little  bird  from  the  water  and  in  playing 
with  and  carrying  it.  But  if  I  had  gone  to  him  and 
demanded  to  know  why  he  had  taken  that  happy  little 
life,  which  was  sacred  to  me,  I  think  his  answer,  if  he 
had  condescended  to  make  one,  would  have  been  very 
contemptuous — I  think  he  would  have  said  that  he 
perceived  me  to  be  a  sentimentalist  and  that  he 
declined  to  say  anything  to  a  person  of  that  sort. 

There  are  not,  I  imagine,  many  men  of  so  fine  a 
temper  of  mind  as  to  escape  this  hardening  effect  of 
the  gun  in  the  hand. 

In  conclusion  of  this  chapter  I  will  go  back  to  the 
subject  of  the  Cornish  seals  of  that  small  surviving 
colony  which  has  its  ancestral  home  in  the  caves  out- 
side the  Bay  of  St.  Ives.  Sportsmen  occasionally 
shoot  them  just  for  the  pleasure  of  the  thing,  but  the 
fishermen  of  St.  Ives  do  not  consider  that  they  suffer 
any  injury  from  the  animals  and  have  consequently 
refrained  from  persecuting  them.  Unhappily  they 
are  now  threatened  with  extermination  from  a  new 
quarter:  the  students  at  the  Camborne  Mining  School 
have  recently  found  out  a  new  and  pleasant  pastime, 
which  is  to  seat  themselves  with  rifle  or  fowling-piece 
on  the  cliff  and  watch  for  the  appearance  of  a  brown 
head  above  the  water  below  of  a  seal  going  out  of  or 
coming  in  to  the  caves  and  letting  fly  at  it.  When 
they  hit  the  seal  it  sinks  and  is  seen  no  more,  but  the 
animal  is  not  wanted,  the  object  is  to  shoot  it,  and 
this  accomplished  the  sportsman  goes  back  happy  and 
proud  at  his  success  in  having  murdered  so  large  and 
human-like  a  creature. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
THE   COMING   OF   SPRING 

Spring  in  winter — John  Cocking — Antics  and  love-flights  of  the 
shag — Herring  gull  mocked  by  a  jackdaw — Migrating  sea-birds 
— Departure  of  winter  visitors — Appearance  of  the  wheatear — 
Resident  songsters — The  frogs'  carnival — A  Dominican  adder 
— Willow-wren  and  chifFchaff — Nesting  birds  and  washing-day 
— A  merciful  woman — Pied  wagtails  in  a  quarry — Boys  and 
robins. 

ATER  the  frost  described  two  chapters  back,  the 
change  to  the  normal  winter  temperature  was 
so  great  as  to  make  it  seem  like  spring  before 
the  end  of  January.  When  spring  does  come  to 
England,  known  to  all  by  many  welcome  signs,  it 
makes  but  a  very  slight  difference  in  this  West 
Cornwall  district  and  is  hardly  recognised.  For 
more  than  half  the  year,  from  October  to  May, 
it  is  comparatively  a  verdureless  and  flowerless  land, 
dark  with  furze  and  grey  with  rocks  and  heather, 
splashed  with  brown-red  of  dead  bracken.  Not  till 

261 


262  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  end  of  May  will  the  bracken  live  again  and 
make  the  rough  wilderness  green,  and  not  till  July 
will  the  dead-looking  heath  have  its  flush  of  purple 
colour.  Nevertheless,  from  autumn  onwards  the 
sense  of  spring  in  the  earth  is  never  long  absent. 
It  rains  and  rains  ;  sea-mists  come  up  and  blot  out 
the  sight  of  all  things,  and  the  wind  raves  everlast- 
ingly, and,  finally,  there  may  be  a  spell  of  frost  or 
a  fall  of  snow  ;  but  through  it  all,  at  very  frequent 
intervals,  the  subtle  influence,  the  "  ethereal  mild- 
ness," makes  itself  felt.  It  is  as  if  the  sweet  season 
had  never  really  forsaken  this  end  of  all  the  land, 
following  the  receding  sun,  but  rather  as  if  it  had 
retired  with  the  adder  and  the  mother  bumble-bee 
into  some  secret  hiding-place  to  sleep  a  little  while 
and  wake  as  often  as  the  rain  ceased  and  the  wind 
grew  still  to  steal  forth  and  give  a  mysterious  gladness 
to  the  air.  It  is  felt  even  more  by  the  wild  creatures 
than  by  man,  and  I  think  that  John  Cocking  is  one  of 
the  first  to  show  it,  for  by  mid-January  he  has  got 
himself  a  curly  crest  and  a  new  spirit. 

John  Cocking  is  the  local  name  of  the  shag,  the 
commonest  species  of  cormorant  on  this  coast,  a  big, 
heavy,  ungainly-looking  creature,  the  ugliest  fowl  in 
Britain,  half  bird  and  half  reptile  in  appearance  on 
the  water,  where  he  spends  half  his  time  greedily 
devouring  fish  and  the  other  half  sitting  on  the  rocks 
digesting  his  food  and  airing  his  wings.  It  is  hard  to 
imagine  any  softening  or  beautifying  change  in  such 
a  being,  and  indeed  the  only  alteration  to  be  observed 
in  him  at  first  is  that  he  begins  to  pay  some  attention 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING  263 

to  his  fellow  shags  and  to  find  out  occasion  to  quarrel 
with  them.  I  watched  the  behaviour  of  one,  a  tyrant 
and  hooligan,  at  Gurnard's  Head,  at  a  spot  where 
a  mass  of  rocks  overlooking  the  sea  has  one  perfectly 
flat  stone  on  the  top.  This  stone  was  a  favourite 
standing-place  of  the  shags  on  account  of  its  position 
and  flat  surface,  and  it  afforded  space  enough  to 
accommodate  a  score  or  more  birds.  The  bird  I 
watched  had  placed  himself  in  the  centre  of  the  flat 
rock  and  would  not  allow  another  to  share  it  with 
him.  At  intervals  of  a  few  minutes  a  cormorant 
coming  up  from  the  sea  would  settle  on  it,  as 
he  had  always  or  for  a  long  time  been  accustomed 
to  do,  whereupon  the  John  Cocking  in  possession 
would  twist  his  snaky  head  round  and  glare  at  him 
with  his  malignant  emerald-green  eyes.  If  this  pro- 
duced no  effect  he  would  open  wide  his  beak  and  dart 
his  head  out  towards  the  intruder  just  as  an  irritated 
adder  lunges  at  you  when  you  are  out  of  his  reach. 
Then,  if  the  new-comer  still  refused  to  quit,  he  would 
pull  himself  up  erect  and  hurl  his  heavy  body  against 
the  other  and  send  him  flying  off  the  rock.  The 
ejected  one  would  then  either  fly  away  or  find  himself 
a  place  on  the  sloping  rock  among  the  nine  or  ten 
others  who  had  been  treated  in  the  same  way.  Mean- 
while the  ruffian  himself  would  go  back  to  the  middle 
of  the  stone  platform,  holding  his  tail  stuck  up  verti- 
cally like  a  staff  and  turn  himself  about  this  way  and 
that  as  if  asking  the  whole  company  if  there  was 
any  other  Johnny  there  who  would  like  to  try  conclu- 
sions with  him. 


264  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  softening  of  the  ugly  bird  comes  a  little  later 
when  the  hooligan  has  got  a  mate  and  both  are  half 
beside  themselves  with  joy  which  they  express  by 
rubbing  their  snaky  necks  together,  crossing  and  see- 
sawing them,  first  on  one  side  then  the  other,  like  knife 
and  steel  in  the  butcher's  hands.  When  the  nesting- 
site  has  been  chosen,  John  Cocking  is  seen  at  his  best, 
playing  the  attentive  young  husband  ;  he  visits  her 
twenty  times  an  hour,  always  with  something  in  his 
beak,  a  bit  of  seaweed  or  a  stick,  just  because  he 
must  give  her  something,  and  she  takes  it  from  him 
and  bows  this  way  and  that  and  puts  it  down  and 
takes  it  up  again,  and  out  of  her  overflowing  affection 
gives  it  back  to  him — "  Dear,  you  must  not  be  so 
generous  !  "  And  he  flies  away  with  it  again  just 
to  have  an  excuse  to  fly  back  the  next  minute 
and  insist  on  her  accepting  it.  The  great  change, 
greater  even  than  his  new  charming  manner  to- 
wards his  mate,  is  in  his  flight  on  quitting  the 
nesting-place  :  he  flies  and  returns,  and  passes  and 
repasses  before  her,  and  alights  on  the  rock  for  a 
moment  and  then  off  again — all  to  exhibit  his  grace, 
his  imitation  of  the  love-flight  of  the  cushat  and 
turtle-dove.  The  curious  thing  is  that  so  heavy  and 
ungainly  a  creature,  with  such  a  laboured  flight  at 
other  times,  does  succeed  fairly  well,  as  if  that  new 
fire  in  him  had  made  him  lighter,  more  volatile  and 
like  the  white-winged  birds  about  him. 

The  cormorants  are  the  earliest  breeders,  excepting 
the  ravens,  now  so  much  persecuted  by  the  injurious 
idiots  and  Philistines  who  call  themselves  collectors 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING  265 

and  naturalists  that  they  rarely  succeed  in  rearing 
their  young  ;  and  the  next  to  follow  are  the  herring 
gulls.  The  gull  fixes  on  a  site  for  his  nest,  but  long 
before  building  begins  he  appears  anxious  to  let  all 
his  neighbours  know  that  this  particular  spot  is  his 
very  own  and  that  he  looks  on  their  approach  with 
jealous  eyes.  Not  green  eyes  like  the  cormorant's, 
but  of  a  very  pure  luminous  yellow  like  the  vivid 
eyes  of  a  harrier  hawk,  or  some  brilliant  yellow  gem, 
or  like  the  glazed  petal  of  a  buttercup  lit  by  a  sun- 
beam. His  gull  neighbours  respect  his  rights,  but 
the  jackdaws  mock  at  his  feeling  of  proprietorship 
and  amuse  themselves  very  much  at  his  expense. 

One  day  I  watched  a  pair  of  gulls  on  a  rock  they 
had  recently  taken  possession  of — a  large  mass  of 
granite  thrust  out  from  the  cliff  over  the  sea.  The 
female  was  reposing  at  the  spot  where  it  was  intended 
the  nest  should  be,  while  the  male  kept  guard,  walk- 
ing proudly  about  on  his  little  domain,  now  turning 
an  eye  up  to  watch  the  birds  flying  overhead,  then 
stooping  to  pick  up  a  pebble  to  hold  it  a  few  moments 
in  his  bill  and  drop  it  again,  and  then  marching  up  to 
his  mate,  whereupon  they  would  open  wide  their 
yellow  beaks,  stretch  out  their  necks  and  join  their 
voices  in  a  loud  triumphant  chant.  "Here  we  are,"  he 
appeared  to  be  saying,  "  established  on  our  own  rock, 
which  belongs  exclusively  to  us  with  everything  on  it, 
even  to  the  smallest  pebble  and  to  every  leaf  and 
flower  of  the  thrift  and  sea-campion  growing  on  it. 
Not  a  bird  of  them  all  will  venture  to  alight  on  this  rock. 
Come  now,  stand  up  and  let  us  shout  together ! " 


266  THE   LAND'S   END 

And  shout  they  did,  their  loudest,  and  in  the 
middle  of  their  shouting  performance  a  jackdaw, 
detaching  himself  from  a  company  of  thirty  or  forty 
birds  wheeling  about  overhead,  dropped  plump  down 
on  to  the  rock.  Instantly  the  gull  dashed  at  and 
drove  him  away,  but  no  sooner  was  he  back  on  his 
rock  than  he  found  the  daw  back  too,  and  had  to 
hunt  him  away  again,  and  then  again  to  the  ninth 
time.  And  at  last  when  he  had  been  mocked  nine 
times  he  became  furious  and  set  himself  to  give  the 
insolent  daw  a  lesson  he  would  not  forget  :  over  the 
sea  and  land  and  along  the  face  of  the  cliff  he  chased 
him,  and  up  into  the  sky  they  rose  and  down  again, 
the  daw  at  his  greatest  speed,  the  pursuer  screaming 
with  wrath  close  behind  him,  but  he  could  not  catch 
or  hurt  him,  and  at  last  giving  up  the  chase  returned 
to  alight  once  more  on  his  rock.  But  the  daw  had 
followed  him  back,  and  no  sooner  had  the  gull  folded 
his  wings  than  down  on  the  rock  he  dropped  once 
more  and  sat  there,  a  picture  of  impudence,  eyeing 
the  other's  movements  with  his  little  white  mocking 
eyes.  What  will  happen  now  ?  I  asked  myself.  But 
the  gull  was  not  going  to  be  made  a  fool  of  any 
more  ;  he  put  up  with  the  insult,  and  after  two  or 
three  minutes,  finding  he  was  to  have  no  more  fun, 
the  daw  flew  off  to  rejoin  his  companions. 

Sea-birds,  visible  from  the  headlands,  are  common 
enough  throughout  the  cold  season,  but  after  mid- 
winter their  numbers  increase,  until  at  last  you  may 
see  the  travellers  passing  by  in  small  flocks  of  a  dozen 
to  a  hundred  or  even  two  hundred  birds,  almost 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING  267 

every  day  and  often  all  day  long,  flock  succeeding 
flock  as  if  they  were  all  keeping  in  a  line — puffins, 
razorbills,  guillemots — flying  low  on  rapidly-beating 
wings,  their  bodies  showing  black  and  white  just 
above  the  rough  surface  of  the  sea.  More  interesting 
than  these  in  appearance  are  those  dusky-winged 
swifts  of  the  ocean,  the  shearwaters,  travellers  the 
same  way,  not  in  flocks  but  singly  and  in  twos  and 
threes  and  sometimes  as  many  as  half  a  dozen,  all 
keeping  wide  apart,  searching  the  sea  as  they  go, 
moving  very  swiftly  above  the  water  in  a  series  of 
wide  curves  looking  like  shadows  of  birds  passing, 
invisible,  far  up  in  the  sky.  Sometimes  they  seemed 
like  shadows,  and  sometimes  I  imagined  them  to  be 
the  ghosts  of  those  pelagic  birds  which  had  recently 
died  in  all  the  seas  which  flow  round  the  world, 
travelling  by  some  way  mysteriously  known  to  them 
to  their  ultimate  bourne  in  the  furthest  north,  beyond 
the  illimitable  fields  of  ice  where,  according  to  Court- 
hope,  dead  birds  have  their  paradise. 

While  this  migration  is  visibly  going  on  at  sea 
another  is  in  progress  all  over  the  land  which  is  not 
seen  or  not  noticed,  and  this  is  the  departure  of  visi- 
tants from  the  northern  parts  of  Britain  which  have 
been  wintering  in  Cornwall.  From  day  to  day  their 
numbers  diminish  imperceptibly — first  fieldfares  and 
redwings  ;  then  starlings,  thrushes,  larks,  pipits,  wag- 
tails and  some  other  species  which  come  in  smaller 
numbers.  By  the  end  of  February  or  quite  early  in 
March  the  winter  visitors,  British  and  foreign,  have 
all  slipped  quietly  away,  their  eastward  movement 


268  THE   LAND'S   END 

unmarked,  and  still  no  new  bird  from  oversea  has 
come  to  take  their  place.  Then,  one  day  in  March 
when  the  sun  shines,  as  you  stroll  by  the  sea,  sud- 
denly a  flash  of  white  comes  before  you  at  a  dis- 
tance of  forty  or  fifty  yards  and  you  see  your  first 
wheatear,  or  whitaker  as  the  natives  call  him,  back 
in  his  old  home  among  the  rocks.  And  as  he  is 
the  first  to  come  you  think  him  the  most  beautiful 
bird  in  the  world  in  his  chaste  and  delicate  dress  of 
black  and  white  and  buff"  and  clear  blue-grey.  And 
so  when  you  first  hear  him  uttering  his  wild  brief 
warble,  as  he  flutters  in  the  air  in  appearance  a  great 
black  and  white  butterfly,  you  think  that  no  sound 
can  compare  with  it  in  exquisite  purity  and  sweetness. 
Away  from  the  sea  you  will  hear  no  spring  bird  ; 
the  only  songs  are  of  the  resident  species  which  you 
have  heard  at  intervals  throughout  the  winter — robin 
and  wren  and  dunnock  and  lark  and  corn  bunting. 
The  only  new  song — if  song  it  may  be  called — is  not 
uttered  by  a  bird  at  all,  although  it  often  has  a  curi- 
ously bird-like  musical  tinkle.  You  begin  to  hear 
it  as  you  ramble  among  the  furze  thickets  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  some  hidden  stream — a  succes- 
sion of  chirping  and  croaking  sounds  in  various  keys, 
and  sounds  like  the  craking  of  corncrakes,  and  at 
intervals  the  little  musical  sounds  as  of  birds  and  of 
running  water.  The  frogs  are  having  their  grand 
annual  carnival,  and  when  seen  congregated  at  the 
water-courses,  it  is  strange  to  think  they  should  be 
so  abundant  in  this  stony  district  overgrown  with 
harsh  furze,  ling  and  bracken.  You  have  perhaps 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING  269 

spent  months  in  the  place  without  seeing  a  frog,  now 
following  the  stream  you  could  count  hundreds  at 
their  revels  in  the  water,  brown  and  olive  frogs,  clay 
colour,  yellow  and  old  gold,  and  some  strangely 
marked  with  black  and  brown  on  a  pale  ground. 
These  congregations  which  begin  to  form  before 
March  are  continued  until  May. 

Adders,  seen  occasionally  on  warm  days  in  Febru- 
ary, are  common  enough  in  March  and  April  if  one 
knows  how  to  find  them.  Here,  at  two  spots  within 
half  a  mile  of  each  other,  I  found  two  of  the  most 
singular  and  beautifully  coloured  adders  I  had  ever 
seen.  One  was  of  so  pale  a  grey  in  its  ground  colour 
as  to  appear  white  at  a  little  distance  ;  the  other  was 
perfectly  white,  the  zigzag  band  intensely  black  with 
a  narrow  border  of  delicate  buff.  I  turned  him  over 
expecting  to  find  some  curious  variation  in  the  colour 
of  the  belly,  and  was  disappointed  to  find  it  the  usual 
dark  blue  ;  but  I  was  so  charmed  with  this  rare 
Dominican  adder  that  I  kept  it  half  an  hour,  carrying 
it  to  a  piece  of  level  green  turf  for  the  pleasure  of 
watching  the  sinuous  movements  of  so  strange  a 
serpent  over  the  ground  before  I  finally  let  it  go  into 
hiding  among  the  bushes. 

After  you  have  seen  and  heard  the  wheatears  you 
begin  to  listen  in  the  furze  and  thorn  grown  bottoms 
for  that  bright,  airy,  tender,  running,  rippling  little 
melody  of  the  willow-wren,  which  should  come  next, 
and  is  so  universal  in  England,  and  it  will  surprise 
you  to  hear  the  chiffchaff  before  him,  for  in  this 
treeless  district  the  species  so  abundant  everywhere 


270  THE   LAND'S   END 

else  is  comparatively  rare,  while  the  local  chiffchaff  is 
exceedingly  common. 

Before  the  earliest  summer  migrants  are  heard 
some  of  the  resident  species  are  breeding,  not  only 
on  the  cliffs,  but  the  small  birds  in  the  bushes — 
thrushes,  blackbirds,  dunnocks,  wrens  and  others. 
I  was  surprised  to  find  that  clothes-drying  was  a  very 
serious  trouble  to  these  bush-breeders  where  there  are 
no  trees.  Monday  is  washing-day  at  the  farms  and 
cottages,  and  it  is  usual  to  use  the  stone  hedges 
covered  with  their  luxuriant  crop  of  furze  as  a 
drying-place.  Looking  over  the  land  from  some 
elevated  place  you  see  the  gleam  of  white  linen  far 
and  near  as  of  hedges  covered  with  snow.  Passing 
one  of  these  hedges  one  evening  I  found  a  gather- 
ing of  about  a  dozen  blackbirds  in  a  state  of  great 
excitement,  hopping  and  flying  up  and  down,  chuck- 
ling and  screaming  before  the  white  sheets  and 
counterpanes  covering  some  of  the  large  round  bushes. 
Poor  birds  !  it  was  late  in  the  day  and  they  were 
getting  desperate,  since  if  these  hateful  white  cover- 
ings were  not  removed  soon  so  as  to  let  them 
return  to  their  nests  their  eggs  would  be  chilled  beyond 
hope.  Some  of  the  birds  care  as  little  for  the  cover- 
ing sheet  as  rooks  and  jackdaws  do  for  the  grotesque 
imitations  of  a  human  figure  set  up  in  the  ploughed 
fields  to  frighten  them.  A  woman  in  one  of  the 
cottages  told  me  that  once  when  going  round  among 
the  furze  bushes  where  her  things  were  drying  she 
noticed  a  dunnock  slip  out  from  under  a  sheet  and  fly 
away.  She  lifted  the  sheet  and  found  ,a  nest  with 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING          271 

fledglings  in  it  close  to  the  top  of  the  bush.  "  Why, 
gracious  me!"  she  exclaimed,  "perhaps  I've  been 
covering  their  dear  little  nesties  with  my  washing 
without  ever  knowing  such  a  thing.  I'll  just  have 
a  look  at  the  other  bushes."  And  at  the  very  next 
bush  on  peering  under  the  cloth  spread  over  it  she 
spied  a  dunnock  sitting  on  its  nest — sitting,  she  soon 
found,  on  five  lovely  little  blue  eggs  !  In  the  evening 
when  the  family  were  having  tea  she  told  them  about 
it,  and  immediately  her  boys  began  to  tease  her  to  tell 
them  where  the  nest  was,  and  after  a  good  deal  of  talk 
and  solemn  promise  on  the  part  of  the  boys  that  they 
would  not  take  nor  even  touch  one  of  the  little  blue 
eggs,  and  many  warnings  on  her  side  that  they  would 
have  the  rope's  end  if  they  ever  dared  to  do  such 
a  cruel  thing,  she  led  the  way  to  the  bush  and  allowed 
them  all  to  have  a  good  look  at  the  nest  and  the  five 
little  gems  of  blue  colour  lying  in  it.  But  from  that 
day  she  had  no  peace,  for  now  her  bad  boys  had  got 
a  means  of  coercing  her,  and  she  had  to  let  them  stay 
away  from  school  and  go  where  and  do  what  they 
liked  and  to  give  them  bread  and  butter  and  pasties 
at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  whatever  they  asked  for  ; 
for  if  she  refused  them  anything  they  would  say, 
"  Then  we'll  go  and  get  the  eggs  out  of  the  hedge- 
sparrow's  nest "  ;  nor  could  she  punish  them  for  any- 
thing they  did  for  the  same  reason.  It  was  only 
when  the  blue  eggs  hatched  and  the  young  birds  were 
safely  reared  that  she  got  the  upper  hand  in  her  house 
once  more.  Poor,  anxious,  thin,  shrill-voiced  woman, 
fighting  for  a  small  bird  with  her  rough  sons,  her  hus- 


272  THE   LAND'S   END 

band  standing  silent  by  listening  with  amused  con- 
tempt to  the  dispute  ;  for  he  too  had  been  a  boy,  and 
was  not  the  harrying  of  birds  a  boy's  proper  pastime  ? 
But  she  was  one  of  the  few  who  made  it  possible  for 
me  to  live  with  and  not  hate  my  fellow-creatures 
even  in  these  habitations  of  cruelty. 

In  conclusion  of  this  chapter  I  will  relate  two  other 
little  incidents  of  this  kind  which  show  that  the 
spirit  of  mercy  is  not  wholly  dead.  A  pair  of  pied 
wagtails  were  constantly  seen  at  a  stone  quarry  near 
a  village  I  stayed  at,  and  as  they  appeared  very 
tame  I  spoke  to  the  quarrymen  about  them.  They 
said  the  birds  had  lived  there,  winter  and  summer, 
five  years,  and  bred  every  spring  in  a  hole  among  the 
stones  at  the  side  of  the  quarry.  They  were  as  tame 
as  chickens  and  came  for  crumbs  every  day  at  dinner 
time,  and  when  it  was  raining  and  the  men  had  to 
take  shelter  in  their  little  stone  hut  inside  the  quarry, 
the  wagtails,  or  tinners  as  they  are  called  in  West 
Cornwall,  would  run  in  and  feed  at  their  feet. 

On  my  return,  in  the  spring  of  1907,  to  this  place 
I  found  a  pair  of  wheatears  in  possession  ;  they  had 
fought  the  wagtails  and  driven  them  away  and  made 
their  nest  in  the  same  place.  The  same  kindly  pro- 
tection was  given  to  them  as  to  the  old  favourites, 
though  they  never  became  so  tame  ;  and  I  saw  the 
young  safely  brought  off. 

We  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter  that  the  robin  is 
somewhat  of  a  sacred  bird,  or  at  all  events  that  the 
feeling  in  its  favour,  superstitious  or  not,  is  so  general 
that  even  in  the  darkest  part  of  the  country  the  bird 


THE   COMING   OF   SPRING          273 

when  caught  in  a  gin  is  released  and  allowed  to  fly 
away,  to  perish  of  its  hurts  or  drag  out  a  miserable 
existence  in  a  maimed  condition.  This  feeling  is  a 
great  protection  to  the  bird,  but  in  many  boys  the 
bird-hunting  and  nest-destroying  passion  overmasters 
it,  so  that  I  am  not  greatly  surprised  when  I  find 
boys  persecuting  robin  redbreast. 

One  very  warm  morning  in  early  spring,  walking 
uphill  from  Penzance  to  Castle-an-Dinas,  I  came  on 
two  boys,  aged  about  ten  and  eleven  respectively, 
lying  on  the  green  turf  by  the  side  of  the  hedge.  A 
nice  place  to  rest  and  nice  company  ;  so  I  threw  my- 
self down  by  them  and  started  talking,  naturally 
about  the  birds.  They  replied  reluctantly,  exchanging 
glances  and  looking  very  uncomfortable.  There  were 
plenty  of  nests  now,  I  said  ;  I  was  finding  a  good 
many,  and  I  asked  them  directly  how  many  they  knew 
of  with  eggs  and  young  birds  in  them.  Seeing  that  I 
put  it  that  way  they  recovered  courage  and  one,  after  a 
brief  whispered  consultation  with  the  other,  said 
that  there  was  a  robin's  nest  close  to  my  side,  and  on 
looking  round  I  spied  a  fully-fledged  young  robin 
standing  on  a  trodden-down  little  nest  on  the  bank- 
side.  1  picked  the  bird  up  and  was  surprised  at  its 
docility,  for  it  made  no  effort  to  escape,  and  then, 
more  surprising  still,  the  old  bird  flew  down  and 
perched  a  yard  off,  but  did  not  appear  at  all  anxious 
about  the  safety  of  its  young.  "  I  wonder,"  said  I, 
"  what  has  become  of  the  others  ?  There  must  have 
been  more  young  robins  in  this  nest — it  looks  as  if  it 
had  had  three  or  four  to  tread  it  down." 


274  THE   LAND'S   END 

Whereupon  one  of  the  boys  produced  a  second 
robin  from  his  jacket  pocket,  and  when  I  took  it 
from  him  the  other  boy  pulled  out  two  more  robins 
from  his  pockets  and  handed  them  to  me. 

"  Now  look  here,"  I  began  in  my  severest  tone,  and 
proceeded  to  give  them  a  lecture  on  their  unkindness 
in  taking  young  robins,  and  did  not  forget  to  quote 
Blake  on  the  subject,  for  of  all  birds  the  robin  was  the 
least  fitted  to  be  made  a  prisoner,  and  so  on  until  1 
finished. 

But  the  boys  showed  no  sense  of  guilt  or  repent- 
ance and  were  no  more  disturbed  at  my  words  than 
the  robins  were  at  being  handled,  and  at  length  one  of 
them  said  that  they  had  no  intention  of  taking  the 
birds  home. 

"  What,  then,  did  you  have  them  in  your  pockets 
for  ?  "  I  demanded. 

He  replied  that  they  put  them  in  their  pockets  just 
to  keep  them  out  of  my  sight.  They  were  playing 
with  the  birds  when  I  found  them,  and  they  had 
known  the  nest  since  it  was  made,  and  every  day  after 
the  young  had  come  out  one  or  both  of  them  had 
paid  them  a  visit,  and  they  always  brought  a  small 
supply  of  caterpillars  to  feed  the  robins  with. 

It  was  quite  true,  the  tameness  of  the  four  young 
robins  sitting  on  our  hands  and  knees  was  a  proof  of  it. 
From  time  to  time  while  we  sat  there  with  them  the  old 
birds  flew  down  near  us  just  to  take  a  look  round  as 
it  seemed  and  then  flew  off  again,  but  by  and  by  when 
we  put  them  back  on  their  little  platform  the  parents 
came  and  fed  them  close  to  our  side. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
SOME    EARLY    FLOWERS 

Late  flowers  at  Land's  End — Sweet-scented  colt's-foot — Its  luxuri- 
ance and  beauty — A  pretty  and  singular  girl — A  gardener  on 
the  colt's-foot — Colt's-foot  in  Madron  churchyard — A  vegetable 
rat — Billy  and  his  charlock  bouquet — "Farmer's  Glory" — Early 
blue  flowers — A  matter-of-fact  girl — Vernal  squill — Beauty  and 
habits — A  blue  band  by  the  sea — The  glory  of  flowers — Secret 
of  the  charm  of  flowers — Expression  of  the  blue  flower. 

BIRDS   are    perhaps    too    much    to    me  ;    at    all 
events,  I  find  that  an  entire  chapter  has  been 
written  on  the  coming  of  spring  without  a  word 
in  it  about  flowers  ;  it  was  nearly  all  taken  up  with 
the  feathered  people.     Yet  one  cannot  think  of  spring 
without  those  little  touches  of  moist  brilliant  colour 
shining  gem-like  among  the  old  dead  brown  leaves 
and  herbage  and  in  all  green  places.     Even  here,  in 

275 


276  THE   LAND'S   END 

a  district  comparatively  flowerless  for  many  months, 
as  I  have  said,  there  are  flowers  to  be  seen  if  looked 
for  pretty  well  all  the  year  round.  Just  now,  before 
sitting  down  to  write  this  chapter  at  the  windy  bleak 
Land's  End,  a  very  few  days  before  Christmas,  I 
went  out  in  the  late  afternoon,  and  seeing  herb-robert 
looking  very  pretty  in  the  shelter  of  a  stone  hedge, 
then  some  other  small  flower,  and  then  others,  I  began 
idly  plucking  a  spray  or  two  of  each,  and  after  cross- 
ing three  or  four  fields  and  home  again  I  found  that 
my  little  bouquet  contained  blooms  of  seventeen  dif- 
ferent species.  If  I  had  gone  on  a  few  fields  further 
the  number  might  have  been  twenty-five  or  thirty. 
These  little  summer  and  autumn  flowers  that  bloom 
on  till  frosts  come  are  all  of  very  common  kinds, 
except,  perhaps,  the  yellow  pansy  which  is  confined 
to  the  western  extremity  of  the  county.  There  are 
other  flowers  proper  to  the  early  spring  which  were 
a  delight  to  me  and  which  will  ever  be  associated  in 
my  mind  with  the  thoughts  of  Cornwall. 

Curiously  enough  the  one  which  comes  first  to  my 
mind  is  a  plant  universally  despised  and  disliked  by 
the  common  people  and,  for  all  I  know  to  the  con- 
trary, by  the  people  who  are  not  common  :  they  speak 
of  it  as  a  "  weed "  and  a  "  nuisance " ;  nor  is  it  a 
spring  or  summer  flower  but  blooms  in  midwinter. 
It  is  already  coming  out  now  and  before  the  middle 
of  January  will  be  in  full  bloom.  This  is  the  sweet- 
scented  colt's-foot,  sometimes  called  winter  heliotrope, 
on  account  both  of  the  purple  colour  and  powerful 
scent  of  the  flower.  The  books  say  that  it  smells  of 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  277 

vanilla,  also  that  the  plant  is  an  alien,  but  when 
introduced  they  do  not  say.  The  Victorian  History 
of  Cornwall  does  not  mention  such  a  plant.  I  have 
looked  at  the  MS.  work  of  John  Rolfe  (1878)  on  the 
plants  of  West  Cornwall,  in  the  Penzance  Library, 
but  he  does  not  tell  us  how  long  ago  it  ran  wild  in 
this  district.  It  flourishes  greatly  at  Penzance, 
St.  Ives  and  many  of  the  neighbouring  villages,  root- 
ing itself  in  the  stone  hedges  and  covering  them 
entirely  with  a  marvellously  beautiful  garment  of 
round,  disc-shaped,  flat  leaves,  of  all  sizes  from  that 
of  a  crown  piece  to  that  of  a  dessert  plate,  all  of  the 
most  vivid  green  in  nature.  The  flowers,  of  a  dim 
lilac-purple,  are  on  thick  straight  stems  which  spring 
directly  from  the  roots,  and,  like  sweet  violets,  they 
are  mostly  hidden  by  the  luxuriant  leaves.  The  leaves, 
which  come  in  winter  and  spring,  last  pretty  well  all 
the  year  round,  and  the  roots,  the  gardeners  say,  are 
enormous,  and  as  they  push  through  the  crevices  and 
wind  themselves  about  among  the  stones  it  is  impos- 
sible to  get  rid  of  the  plant. 

One  of  the  prettiest  scenes  I  witnessed  in  West 
Cornwall  is  associated  with  this  plant.  I  saw  a  girl  of 
about  seventeen,  small  for  her  age  and  of  a  slim 
figure,  come  out  of  a  cottage  door  and  walk  down  to 
the  little  garden  gate  just  as  I  came  abreast  of  it.  At 
the  gate  was  a  little  foot-bridge  over  a  stream  which 
rushed  by  with  a  good  deal  of  noise  and  foam  over 
the  rocks  in  its  bed.  The  stone  hedges  and  detached 
masses  of  rock  on  both  sides  of  the  bridge  were 
covered  over  with  an  enormous  growth  of  colt's-foot, 


278  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  plants  flowing  over  into  the  stream  and  even 
covering  some  of  the  big  boulder  stones  in  it.  That 
was  the  setting  and  the  girl  was  worthy  of  it,  stand- 
ing there,  fresh  from  the  wash-tub,  her  arms  bare  to 
the  shoulders,  in  her  thin  blue  cotton  gown,  regarding 
me  with  lively  inquisitive  eyes.  She  had  the  double 
attraction  of  prettiness  and  singularity.  It  was  a 
Cornish  face,  healthy  but  colourless  as  in  the  majority 
of  the  women,  very  broad,  high  cheek-bones  ;  but 
it  differed  in  the  fineness  of  the  features  and  in 
the  pointed  chin  which  together  with  the  large  eyes 
gave  it  that  peculiar  interesting  cat-like  form  seen  in 
some  pretty  women,  and  which  is  so  marked  in  a 
well-known  portrait  of  Queen  Mary  at  Holyrood. 
The  large  eyes  were  of  the  greyish-blue  colour  so 
common  in  this  district,  with  large  pupils  and  that 
deepening  of  colour  at  the  outer  edge  of  the  iris 
which  takes  the  appearance  of  a  black  ring.  These 
ringed  blue  eyes  are  sometimes  seen  in  other  counties 
but  are  most  common  in  the  part  of  Cornwall  where 
I  have  observed  the  people.  Finally  in  strange  con- 
trast with  the  large  blue  eyes  her  hair  was  black  and 
being  unbound  the  wind  was  blowing  it  all  about  her 
face  and  neck. 

I  stopped  to  talk  to  the  girl  and  had  plenty  of  time 
to  get  my  mental  sketch  of  her.  Speaking  of  the 
colt's-foot,  so  abundant  at  her  own  door,  she  told 
me  that  she  had  never  heard  it  named  anything  but 
"weed."  She  also  assured  me  that  she  hated  it,  and 
so  did  every  one,  and  she  could  see  nothing  to  admire 
in  it. 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  279 

At  Penzance  a  gardener  told  me  he  had  been  fight- 
ing this  weed  all  his  life  and  that  his  father  before  him 
had  fought  with  it  all  his  life,  so  that  it  must  have 
established  itself  in  that  place  a  very  long  time  ago. 

At  Madron,  the  famous  and  beautiful  old  village 
on  the  heights  above  Penzance,  I  saw  a  curious  thing 
in  January,  1907.  A  great  part  of  the  extensive 
churchyard  is  covered  with  colt's-foot,  and  after  it  had 
come  into  bloom  the  whole  of  the  mass  of  vivid 
green  leaves  was  killed  by  the  great  frost  I  have 
described  in  chapter  xv.,  but  strange  to  say  the 
flowers  were  not  hurt.  The  ground  was  covered 
with  the  upright  thick  stems,  crowned  with  their  pale 
purple  fragrant  flowers,  and  beneath  them,  dead  and 
brown  and  flat  on  the  earth,  lay  the  leaves  that  lately 
hid  them  with  their  multitudinous  green  discs. 

One  day,  meeting  some  boys  by  the  side  of  a  hedge 
overgrown  with  colt's-foot,  I  asked  them  what  they 
called  the  plant,  and  was  answered  by  the  biggest  boy 
who  knew  most  that  it  was  called  "  rat-plant."  It  was 
named  so,  perhaps,  because  a  rat  could  take  shelter  in 
the  leaves  and  run  very  freely  about  among  them 
without  being  seen.  Or  it  may  be  that  the  name  was 
bestowed  to  express  a  feeling  of  dislike  and  contempt 
— the  idea  that  it  was  a  vegetable  rat,  something  to  be 
warred  against,  dug  up  and  if  possible  extirpated.  It 
is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  think  we  can  no  more  get  rid 
of  Petasites  fragrans,  alias  "  rat-plant,"  than  we  can  of 
Mus  decumanus  itself,  or  Elatta  orientalis,  or  any  other 
of  the  undesirable  aliens,  plant  or  animal,  which  succeed 
in  defying  our  best  efforts  to  oust  them. 


280  THE   LAND'S   END 

Perhaps  some  of  my  sober-minded  readers,  who 
know  the  colt's-foot  and  have  not  seen  its  beauty, 
may  smile  at  my  enthusiasm  even  as  I  have  smiled  at 
my  Cornish  landlady's  story  of  Billy  and  his  enthu- 
siasm for  another  species  of  wild  flower.  Billy  is  a 
youth  of  about  twenty,  son  of  a  small  farmer  in  one 
of  the  villages  I  stayed  at.  This,  like  most  of  the 
villages  on  this  coast,  receives  its  quota  of  summer 
visitors  who  come  from  distant  inland  towns,  and 
some  of  these  found  accommodation  at  Billy's  parents' 
farm.  They  were  ladies,  and  Billy  was  greatly  im- 
pressed with  their  beauty  and  affability,  their  dainty 
dresses,  and  the  nice  way  in  which  they  passed  the 
time,  strolling  about,  sketching,  reading,  lying  on  the 
turf,  and  sitting  in  picturesque  attitudes  on  the  rocks. 
But  what  perhaps  interested  him  most  was  the  keen 
pleasure  they  took  in  the  common  natural  objects  of 
the  place,  especially  the  wild  flowers.  They  talked  to 
Billy  on  the  subject  with  the  result  that  he,  too,  became 
an  admirer  of  wild  flowers,  greatly  to  the  amusement 
of  his  neighbours. 

One  day  my  landlady,  going  along  the  village 
street,  saw  Billy  driving  home  in  the  farm  trap  with 
what  looked  like  a  gigantic  yellow  buttonhole  in  his 
coat.  "  Why,  Billy,  whatever  have  you  got  there  ? " 
she  cried  when  he  pulled  the  horse  up  to  speak  to  her. 
"  Flowers,"  said  Billy.  "  I  saw  them  in  a  cornfield,  and 
I  left  the  horse  and  went  right  out  into  the  middle  of 
the  field  to  get  them.  Ain't  they  pretty  ?"  And  taking 
the  bunch,  the  stems  of  which  he  had  thrust  into  his 
top  pocket,  he  handed  it  down  for  her  to  admire. 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  281 

"  Goodness  me,  boy,  it's  nothing  but  charlock  !  "  she 
exclaimed. 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Billy.  "  And  they  are  very 
pretty  ;  just  you  look  at  them — perhaps  you  never 
knew  how  pretty  they  are."  Then  he  added  senten- 
tiously,  "They  are  flowers,  and  all  flowers  are 
beautiful." 

"  Dear,  dear  !  "  said  she  for  only  reply,  handing  him 
back  his  bouquet. 

"  When  I  get  home,"  continued  Billy,  "  Til  put 
them  in  water  to  keep  them  fresh  and  set  them  on 
the  table,"  and  away  he  drove. 

Billy  with  his  charlock  flowers  reminds  me  of  an 
incident  on  a  farm  in  Hampshire  where  I  was  staying. 
The  farmer  was  a  hard-headed  and  very  hard-working 
man  absorbed  in  the  great  business  of  keeping  his 
farm  like  a  farm  and  of  making  it  pay.  Tares,  turnip- 
fly,  charlock,  couch-grass  and  their  like — these  were 
his  enemies  which  he  hated.  And  his  wife  was  his 
worthy  helpmate. 

One  day  I  brought  in  a  big  bunch  of  poppies,  and 
after  arranging  them  on  their  tall  stems  with  some 
feathery  grasses  in  a  vase  I  put  them  on  the  table  just 
laid  for  the  midday  meal.  The  farmer  came  in  fresh 
from  his  work,  his  mind  as  usual  absorbed  in  his 
affairs,  and  first  taking  up  the  carving-knife  and  fork 
hurriedly  said,  "  For  what  we  are  about  to  receive," 
and  was  just  going  to  plunge  the  fork  into  the  joint 
when  he  caught  sight  of  the  splendid  flowers  before 
him  on  his  own  table,  audaciously  smiling  their  scarlet 
smile  right  at  him. 


282  THE   LAND'S   END 

"  What  are  those  ?  "  he  said,  pointing  with  his  knife 
at  the  flowers  and  addressing  his  wife  in  no  pleasant 
tones.  "  What  does  this  mean  ?  " 

She  cast  down  her  eyes  and  kept  silence. 

"  I  can  tell  you,"  I  said.  "  I  gathered  them  myself 
in  one  of  your  fields  and  put  them  on  the  table  much 
against  your  wife's  wish.  I  can't  imagine  why  she 
objected.  It  is  one  of  our  finest  wild  flowers — I  call 
it  the  Farmer's  Glory." 

"  The  Farmer's  Glory  ! — Oh,  that's  what  you  call 

it — well ,"  and  then  he  suddenly  sat  down  and 

began  carving  with  tremendous  energy  and  in  grim 
silence. 

My  pen  has  run  away  with  me,  since  I  had  the 
images  of  but  two  or  three  wild  flowers  in  my  mind 
to  write  about  in  this  chapter — flowers  of  the  early 
spring  only — and  then  the  winter  heliotrope  came  up 
and  would  not  be  denied.  True,  it  was  of  the  winter, 
like  Kirke  White's  «  Rosemary  "— 

Sweet-scented  flower  !  who  art  wont  to  bloom 

On  January's  front  severe, 
And  o'er  the  wintry  desert  drear 

To  waft  thy  sweet  perfume — 

still,  I  had  to  write  about  it.  A  flower,  like  a  bird  or 
anything  in  nature,  is  little  to  me  unless  it  "  ministers 
some  particular  cause  of  remembrance,"  which  means 
in  my  case  that  either  on  account  of  its  intrinsic 
beauty  or  charm  or  of  its  associations  it  moves  my 
emotions  more  strongly  than  others. 

The  colt's-foot  having  come  first,  there  are  but  two 
others  to  speak  particularly  of — a  yellow  and  a  blue 


SOME   EARLY    FLOWERS  283 

flower.  But  the  yellow  is  the  furze,  so  important  a 
flower  in  this  part  of  England  and  so  much  to  me, 
that  it  must  have  a  chapter  to  itself,  so  that  in  this 
chapter  there  will  be  but  one  described  ;  but  I  shall 
speak  of  others  incidentally  and  of  several  things 
besides. 

In  my  early  spring  rambles  I  found  that  blue 
flowers  were  more  abundant  than  all  of  other  colours 
put  together  ;  but  this  was  in  the  rough  places  and 
lanes  and  by  the  stone  and  furze  hedges.  Here  in 
places  almost  all  the  flowers  appeared  to  be  blue, 
from  the  tall  blue  columbine  to  the  small  ground  ivy 
and  the  tiniest  veronica.  Of  these  I  think  the  most 
remarkable  was  the  wild  hyacinth  on  account  of  its 
habit  of  growing  on  the  tops  of  the  old  stone  hedges. 
The  effect  is  not  so  charming  as  when  we  see  them 
covering  the  ground  under  the  trees  ;  but  it  is  most 
singular  and  beautiful  too  when  the  band  of  blue  has 
the  furze  bushes  covered  with  yellow  blossoms  for 
background. 

One  April  day  I  had  a  talk  with  a  native  about  the 
blue  flowers  which  were  abundant  and  in  great  variety 
at  the  side  of  the  path.  This  was  on  the  slope  of  a 
hill  looking  to  the  sea,  about  a  mile  from  Mousehole. 
I  saw  a  girl  crossing  a  grass  field,  and  as  she  was 
making  for  a  gate  opening  on  to  the  path,  I  waited 
for  her  and  when  she  came  out  we  went  on  together 
for  some  distance.  She  had  been  to  take  her  father 
his  dinner  in  a  field  where  he  was  working  and  was 
now  on  her  way  back  to  their  cottage.  Her  age  was 
about  nineteen  or  twenty  and  she  was  of  the  most 


284  THE   LAND'S   END 

common  type  found  in  these  parts — short,  strongly 
built,  somewhat  dumpy  ;  a  blonde  with  grey  or  bluish- 
grey  eyes,  light  fluffy  hair,  and  broad  colourless  face. 
There  was  not  a  good  feature  in  it,  yet  it  did  not 
strike  one  as  homely  but  was  pleasant  to  look  at  on 
account  of  the  lively,  intelligent  and  good-natured 
expression.  Finally,  she  was  not  flustered  or  put  out 
in  the  least  degree  at  being  spoken  to  and  joined  in 
her  walk  by  a  stranger,  but  conversed  freely  with  me 
in  that  simple  natural  frank  way  which  seems  to  me 
the  usual  way  in  Cornwall. 

Mr.  Ford  Madox  HuefFer,  in  his  book  The  Heart 
of  the  Country,  has  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the  separa- 
tion of  the  classes  in  rural  England — the  great  impass- 
able gulf  which  exists  between  gentleman  and  peasant. 
As  an  instance  of  this  he  relates  that  one  evening, 
when  walking  from  a  station  to  the  village  he  was 
staying  at,  he  overtook  a  young  woman  going  the 
same  way,  and  keeping  together  they  conversed  quite 
naturally  and  pleasantly  until  they  got  to  the  end  of 
the  dark  lane  to  where  there  was  a  lamp,  when  it  was 
revealed  to  the  young  woman  that  her  companion  was 
not  of  her  own  class.  "  Why,"  she  exclaimed,  staring 
at  him  in  astonishment,  "  you  are  a  gentleman  !  " 
And  with  that  took  to  her  heels  and  vanished  in  the 
dark. 

Such  an  incident  would  read  like  a  fable  in  Corn- 
wall— in  West  Cornwall  at  all  events — for  it  could 
not  possibly  happen  there.  The  caste  feeling  so  com- 
mon elsewhere  hardly  exists,  and  if  a  gentleman 
speaks  to  a  young  woman  in  a  quiet  lane  she  does 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  285 

not  suspect  that  he  has  any  designs  on  her  nor  feel 
any  sense  of  awe  or  strangeness  to  make  her  silent  or 
awkward.  She  talks  to  him  as  naturally  as  to  one  of 
her  own  class.  It  is  this  common  bond  between 
people  which  one  finds  a  relief  and  pleasure  when 
going  from  an  English,  or  an  Anglo-Saxon,  county  to 
Cornwall  and  which  made  it  pleasant  to  me  to  walk 
with  this  homely  commonplace  peasant  girl. 

But  when  I  talked  to  her  about  the  flowers  growing 
in  profusion  by  the  hedge-side  and  along  the  borders 
of  the  path  she  assured  me  that  she  never  looked 
at  them  and  knew  nothing  about  them.  Well, 
yes,  she  did  know  three  or  four  wild  flowers  by 
their  names. 

"But  surely,"  I  said,  "you  must  know  these  that  are 
so  common — these  little  blue  flowers,  for  instance,  what 
do  you  call  them  ? "  and  I  plucked  a  spray  of  speed- 
well. She  said  they  were  violets,  and  when  I  picked 
a  violet  and  pointed  out  the  difference  in  shape  and 
size  and  colour  she  agreed  that  they  were  a  little  un- 
like when  you  looked  at  them,  "  but,"  she  said,  "  we 
never  look  at  them  and  we  call  all  these  little  blue  ones 
violets."  "But,"  I  persisted,  "flowers  are  the  most 
beautiful  things  on  the  earth  and  we  all  love  and  admire 
them  and  are  glad  to  see  them  again  in  spring — surely 
you  must  know  something  more  than  you  say  about 
them — you  must  have  been  accustomed  to  gather  them 
in  your  childhood."  But  she  would  not  have  it.  "We 
never  take  notice  of  wild  flowers,"  she  said  ;  "they  are 
no  use  and  we  call  them  all  violets — all  these  blue 
ones."  And  she  pointed  to  the  hedge-side,  where  there 


286  THE   LAND'S   END 

were  violet,  forget-me-not,  bird's-eye  and  ground-ivy 
all  growing  together. 

The  poor  girl  did  not  know  much — less  than  most, 
perhaps — even  less  than  Billy  of  the  charlock  bouquet 
who  had  got  the  one  parrot  phrase  that  all  flowers  are 
beautiful  in  his  brain  ;  but  that  which  I  sought  in  her 
and  in  the  pretty,  lively  Cornish,  kitten-like  girl 
already  described,  and  in  dozens  more,  does  not  come 
from  reading  books,  nor  is  it  found  only  in  the  intelli- 
gent. That  something  lacking  in  them  which  you  can 
find  by  seeking  in  the  more  stolid  and  seemingly  duller 
Anglo-Saxon  peasant  is  of  the  race. 

But  enough  of  adventures  in  this  vain  quest  of  the 
elusive  spirit  of  romance  or  poetry.  It  still  remains 
to  speak  of  the  early  spring  flowers,  and  of  the  blue 
one,  which  was  no  common  and  universal  flower  like 
those  I  have  just  mentioned,  but  one  I  had  never  seen 
growing  wild  until  I  came  to  Cornwall.  This  was  the 
vernal  squill,  a  small  blue  lily-shaped  flower  of  a  deli- 
cate, very  beautiful  blue,  hardly  deeper  than  that  of 
the  hairbell,  growing  in  clusters  of  three  or  four  on 
a  polished  stalk  an  inch  or  two  or  three  in  height. 
The  stem  varies  in  length  according  to  the  depth  of 
the  grass  or  herbage  or  dwarf  heath  among  which  it 
grows,  as  the  flower  likes  to  keep  itself  on  a  level 
with  the  surface  of  the  grass,  or  nestling  in  it,  like 
a  stone  in  its  setting.  In  April  I  first  found  it,  a 
flower  or  two  here  and  there,  in  small  depressions  and 
on  sunny  slopes  sheltered  from  the  blast  by  the  huge 
rocks  of  the  headlands  :  it  was  one  of  the  few  first 
early  flowers  which  produce  that  most  fairy-like 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  287 

beautifying  effect  on  these  castled  promontories,  blos- 
soming at  the  feet  of  and  among  the  rugged  masses  of 
granite  overgrown  with  coarse  grey  lichen. 

By  and  by  I  was  delighted  to  find  that  these  few 
scattered  blooms  were  but  the  first  comers  of  an  in- 
numerable multitude,  for  day  by  day  and  week  by 
week  the  number  of  them  increased,  first  keeping  to 
the  sunniest  and  most  sheltered  places,  then  spreading 
until  they  were  everywhere  along  the  coast.  But 
always  within  its  own  curiously  narrow  limit,  bloom- 
ing close  to  the  cliff,  in  some  places  right  to  the  very 
brink,  but  usually  some  yards  back  from  it,  distributed 
over  the  ground  to  a  breadth  of  a  dozen  or  fifteen 
yards,  thus  forming  a  band.  Where  the  soil  is  favour- 
able and  the  flowers  abundant  the  band  is  very 
conspicuous,  and  in  places  where  the  land  slopes  to 
the  cliff  it  broadens  and  occupies  the  ground  to  a 
breadth  of  fifty  to  a  hundred  yards  or  even  more, 
then  narrows  again  and  pursues  its  way,  following  the 
numberless  indentations  of  the  coastline,  climbing  up 
and  down  the  steep  slopes  and  sides  of  gullies  and 
fading  and  almost  vanishing  on  the  barren  heath  on 
the  highest  cliffs. 

Now  when  I  first  saw  the  vernal  squill,  when  it  had 
been  nothing  in  my  mind  but  a  little  blue  flower  with 
a  pretty  book  name,  it  captivated  me  with  its  delicate 
loveliness — its  little  drop  of  cerulean  colour  in  a 
stony  desolate  place — and  with  its  delightful  perfume, 
but  it  certainly  did  not  affect  me  greatly  as  I  have 
been  affected  time  and  again  by  other  flowers,  first 
seen  in  the  greatest  profusion  and  in  their  best  aspect. 


288  THE   LAND'S   END 

The  commonest  of  all  flowers,  the  buttercup,  is  one 
of  these,  as  I  first  beheld  it  covering  whole  meadows 
with  its  pure  delicately  brilliant  yellow.  I  remember 
at  the  end  of  the  African  War  coming  up  one  day  in 
April  from  Southampton  in  a  train  full  of  soldiers 
just  back  from  the  veldt,  and  when  a  meadow  bright 
with  buttercups  came  in  sight  the  men  in  my  com- 
partment all  jumped  up  and  shouted  with  joy.  That 
sight  made  them  realise  as  no  other  could  have 
done,  that  they  were  at  home  once  more  in  England. 
The  wild  hyacinth  is  another  flower  which  took  a 
distinguished  place  in  my  mind  from  the  first  moment 
of  its  coming  before  my  sight,  a  sea  of  misty  blue 
beneath  the  woodland  trees  in  their  tender  early 
spring  foliage.  Another  is  the  gorse  from  the  day 
I  looked  on  a  wide  common  aflame  with  its  bloom, 
still  another  the  briar  rose  first  beheld  in  the 
greatest  luxuriance  and  abundance  on  a  vast  unkept 
hedge  in  Southern  England.  Then,  too,  the  fritillary 
on  the  occasion  of  my  first  finding  it  growing  wild  in 
a  water-meadow  and  standing,  as  in  a  field  of  corn, 
knee-deep  amidst  the  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  crowded  slender  stems  with  their  nodding  pendu- 
lous tulips  so  strangely  chequered  with  darkest  purple 
and  luminous  pink.  But  over  all  the  revelations  of 
the  glory  of  flowers  1  have  experienced  in  this  land 
I  hold  my  first  sight  of  heather  in  bloom  on  the 
Scottish  moors  in  August  shortly  after  coming  to  this 
country.  I  remember  how  I  went  out  and  walked 
many  miles  over  the  moors,  lured  ever  on  by  the 
sight  of  that  novel  loveliness  until  I  was  lost  in 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  289 

a  place  where  no  house  was  visible,  and  how  at 
intervals  when  the  sun  broke  through  the  clouds 
and  shone  on  some  distant  hill  or  slope  from  which 
the  grey  mist  had  just  lifted,  revealing  the  purple 
colour  beneath,  it  appeared  like  a  vision  of  the 
Delectable  Mountains. 

From  the  flowers  which  are  greatest  only  because 
of  their  numbers,  seeing  that,  comparing  flower  with 
flower,  they  are  equalled  and  surpassed  in  lustre  by 
very  many  other  species,  it  may  appear  a  far  descent 
to  my  little  inconspicuous  lily  by  the  sea.  For  what 
was  there  beyond  the  mere  fact  of  its  rarity  to  make 
it  seem  more  than  many  others — than  herb-robert 
in  the  hedge,  for  instance,  or  any  small  delicate  red 
geranium  or  brighter  lychnis  ;  or,  to  come  to  its  own 
colour,  veronica  with  its  "  darling  blue,"  and,  lovelier 
still,  water  forget-me-not,  with  a  yellow  pupil  to  its 
turquoise  iris  ;  or  the  minute  bird-shaped  blue  milk- 
wort,  and  gentian  and  bluebell  and  hairbell  and  borage 
and  periwinkle  and  blue  geranium,  and  that  delicate 
rarity  the  blue  pimpernel,  and  the  still  rarer  and  more 
beautiful  blue  anemone  ?  Nevertheless,  after  many 
days  with  this  unimportant  little  flower,  one  among 
many,  from  its  earliest  appearance,  when  it  blossomed 
sparingly  at  the  foot  of  the  rock,  to  the  time  when  it 
had  increased  and  spread  to  right  and  left  and  formed 
that  blue-sprinkled  band  or  path  by  which  I  walked 
daily  by  the  sea,  often  sitting  or  lying  on  the  turf  the 
better  to  inhale  its  delicious  perfume,  it  came  to  be 
more  to  me  than  all  those  unimportant  ones  which  I 
have  named,  with  many  others  equally  beautiful,  and 


290  THE  LAND'S   END 

was  at  last  regarded  as  among  the  best  in  the  land. 
For  it  had  entered  into  my  soul,  and  was  among 
flowers  an  equal  of  the  briar  rose  and  honeysuckle 
in  the  English  hedges  and  of  the  pale  and  vari- 
coloured Cornish  heath  as  I  saw  it  in  August  in 
lonely  places  among  the  Goonhilly  Downs  in  the 
Lizard  district,  and,  like  that  heath,  it  had  become 
for  ever  associated  in  my  mind  with  the  thought 
of  Cornwall. 

Its  charm  was  due  both  to  its  sky-colour  and 
perfume  and  its  curious  habit  of  growing  just  so  far 
and  no  further  from  the  edge  of  the  cliff,  so  that 
when  I  walked  by  the  sea  I  had  that  blue-flecked  path 
constantly  before  me.  One  day  I  made  the  remark 
mentally  that  it  appeared  as  if  the  sky  itself,  the  genius 
or  blue  lady  of  the  sky,  had  come  down  to  walk  by  the 
sea  and  had  left  that  sky-colour  on  the  turf  where  she 
had  trailed  her  robe,  and  this  shade  or  quality  of  the 
hue  set  me  thinking  of  a  chapter  I  once  wrote  on  the 
"  Secret  of  the  Charm  of  Flowers  "  (Birds  and  Man, 
pp.  140-62),  in  which  the  peculiar  pleasure  which  cer- 
tain flowers  produce  in  us  was  traced  to  their  human 
colouring — in  other  words,  the  expression  was  due  to 
human  associations.  Some  of  my  friends  would  not 
accept  this  view,  and  although  I  still  believe  it  the 
right  one  I  became  convinced  in  the  course  of  the 
argument  of  a  grave  omission  in  my  account  of  the 
blue  flower — that  it  was  unconsciously  associated 
with  the  blue  eye  in  man  and  received  its  distinctive 
expression  from  this  cause  alone.  One  of  my  corre- 
spondents, anxious  to  prove  me  wrong,  quoted  an 


SOME   EARLY   FLOWERS  291 

idea  expressed  by  some  one  that  flowers  are  beautiful 
and  precious  to  us  because,  apart  from  their  intrinsic 
charm  of  colour,  fragrance  and  form,  they  are  abso- 
lutely unrelated  to  our  human  life  with  its  passions, 
sorrows  and  tragedies  ;  and,  finally,  he  said  of  the 
blue  flower,  that  if  it  had  any  associations  at  all  they 
were  not  human  ;  the  suggestion  was  of  the  blue  sky, 
the  open  air,  of  fair  weather.  It  was  so  in  his  own 
case — "  I  can  feel  the  different  blues  of  skies  and  air 
and  distances  in  flower  blue." 

Undoubtedly  he  was  right  as  to  the  fair-weather 
suggestion  in  the  blue  flower — I  could  not  look  at 
the  vernal  squill  without  feeling  convinced  of  it. 
Then,  oddly  enough,  another  correspondent  who  was 
also  among  my  opponents  kindly  sent  me  this  striking 
passage  from  an  old  writer,  Sir  John  Feme,  on  azure 
in  blazonry  :  "  Which  blew  colour  representeth  the 
Aire  amongst  the  elements,  that  of  all  the  rest  is  the 
greatest  favourer  of  life,  as  the  only  nurse  and  main- 
tainer  of  spirits  in  any  living  creature.  The  colour 
blew  is  commonly  taken  from  the  clear  skye  which 
appeareth  so  often  as  the  tempests  be  overblowne, 
and  note  prosperous  successe  and  good  fortune  to  the 
wearer  in  all  his  affayres." 

My  view  now  is  that  the  human  association  is  a 
chief  factor  in  the  expression  of  blue  flowers  in  some 
species,  such  as  pansy,  violet,  speedwell  and  various 
others,  which  bloom  sparsely  and  are  seen  distinctly 
as  single  flowers  and  not  as  mere  splashes  of  colour  ; 
and  that  with  blue  flowers  seen  in  masses,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  wild  hyacinth  and  sometimes  the  viper's 


292  THE   LAND'S   END 

bugloss,  the  association  is  more  with  the  clear  blue 
sky.  But  doubtless  both  elements  are  present  in 
all  cases,  that  is  to  say  with  our  race  ;  among 
dark-eyed  people  the  expression  of  the  blue  flower 
would  have  the  fair-weather  association  alone. 


CHAPTER   XIX 
THE    FURZE    IN   ITS    GLORY 

Fascination  of  the  furze — The  furze  in  literature — Evelyn  on  the 
furze — Furze  faggots — The  beauty  the  effect  of  contrast — Large 
masses  of  bloom — Various  aspects  of  the  furze — Fragrance- 
Linnaeus  and  the  furze — The  cynic  a  spiritual  harpy — Furze  at 
the  Land's  End — The  stone  hedges  ropes  of  bloom — Eye-dazz- 
ling colour — Furze  by  the  sea — Yellow  and  blue. 

I  THINK  that  of  all  plants  indigenous  in  this 
island  the  furze  delights  me  the  most.  This  says 
a  good  deal  for  a  man  who  takes  as  much  pleasure 
as  any  one  in  green  and  growing  things  ;  in  all  of 
them,  from  the  elm  of  greatest  girth  at  Windsor  or 
Badminton,  or  the  noblest  pine  at  Eversley,  or  the 
most  aged  oak  at  Aldermaston,  down  to  the  little  ivy- 
leafed  toad-flax  growing  on  the  wall.  They  move  me, 
each  in  its  way,  according  to  its  character,  to  admira- 
tion, love  and  reverence.  No  sooner  do  I  begin  to 
speak  or  even  to  think  of  them  than  they,  or  their 
images,  are  seen  springing  up  as  by  a  miracle  round 
me,  until  I  seem  to  be  in  a  vast  open  forest  where  all 
beautiful  things  flourish  exceedingly  and  each  in  turn 

293 


294  THE   LAND'S   END 

claims  my  attention.  Merely  to  name  them,  with  just 
a  word  or  two  added  to  characterise  the  special  feeling 
produced  in  each  case,  would  fill  a  page  or  more  ; 
and  the  end  of  it  all  would  be  that  the  words  used  at 
the  beginning  would  have  to  be  said  again — I  think 
the  furze  is  the  one  which  pleases  me  best. 

Now  here  is  something  which  has  been  a  puzzle  to 
me  and  a  cause  of  regret,  or  a  sense  of  something 
missed — the  fact  that,  excepting  a  word  or  two  or  a 
line  about  it  in  the  poets,  the  furze  is  hardly  to  be 
found  in  literature.  Think  of  the  oak  in  this  connec- 
tion ;  think  of  the  elm,  the  yew,  the  ash,  the  rowan, 
the  holly,  hawthorn,  blackthorn,  bramble,  briar,  bul- 
rush and  flowering  rush  and  heather,  with  many,  many 
more  trees,  bushes  and  herbs,  down  even  to  the  little 
pimpernel,  the  daisy,  the  forget-me-not  and  the  lesser 
celandine.  But  who,  beyond  the  line  or  two,  has 
ever  in  verse  or  prose  said  anything  in  praise  of  the 
furze  ? 

One  day,  in  conversation  with  Sir  William  Thisel- 
ton-Dyer,  the  late  Director  of  Kew  Gardens,  who 
knows  a  great  deal  more  of  books  about  plants  than  I 
do,  I  mentioned  this  fact  to  him,  and,  after  taking 
thought,  he  said,  "  It  is  true,  there  isn't  much  to 
find,  but  let  me  recommend  you  to  read  Evelyn." 

It  happened  that  I  knew  Evelyn  and  admired  him 
for  his  noble  diction  :  one  really  wonders  how  a  man 
who  looked  at  plants  with  his  hard,  utilitarian  eyes, 
considering  them  solely  for  their  uses,  could  write  as 
he  did.  It  is  true  that  he  saw  some  beauty  in  the 
holly,  his  favourite,  but  in  little  else.  He  mentions 


THE   FURZE   IN   ITS   GLORY         295 

the  furze  as  a  "  vegetable  trifle,"  and  even  goes  so  far 
as  to  give  it  a  few  favourable  words,  but  without  any- 
thing about  its  appearance,  for  that  did  not  touch  him. 
It  is  not  a  wholly  useless  plant,  says  Evelyn  ;  it  is 
good  for  faggots,  also  it  affords  covert  for  wild  fowl, 
and  the  tops  (bruised)  may  be  recommended  for  a  sickly 
horse.  "  It  will  thoroughly  recover  and  plump  him." 

I  have  often  watched  the  semi-wild  ponies  of  the 
New  Forest  browsing  quite  freely  on  the  blossomed 
tops,  which  they  bruised  for  themselves  with  their 
own  molars  ;  and  now  I  know  that  the  furze  is  also 
"good  for  faggots."  I  have  described  how,  while 
staying  at  a  small  moorland  farm  during  the  winter, 
we  had  furze  for  fuel,  and  how  the  dried  bushes 
made  a  glorious  heat  and  illumination  in  the  open 
wide  fireplace  of  the  old  dark  kitchen  and  living- 
room.  A  couple  of  months  later  when  the  plant 
was  in  full  blossom — acres  and  miles  and  leagues  of 
it — I  could  do  no  less  than  sing  my  poor  little  prose 
song  of  praise  and  gratitude.  To  me  it  is  never 
"  unprofitably  gay,"  nor,  when  I  handle  it,  does  it 
wound  my  hardened  fingers,  causing  me  to  recoil  and 
cry  out  with  the  sensitive  poet  of  the  Task  that  it 
repels  us  with  its  treacherous  spines  as  much  as  it 
attracts  with  its  yellow  bloom. 

The  beauty  of  the  furze  in  flower — that  special 
beauty  and  charm  in  which  it  excels  all  other  plants — 
is  an  effect  of  contrast,  and  is  a  beauty  only  seen  in 
the  entire  plant,  over  which  the  bloom  is  distributed. 
We  see  that  in  shape  and  size,  and  almost  in  colour, 
the  blossom  nearly  resembles  that  of  the  broom,  but 


296  THE   LAND'S   END 

the  effect  is  far  more  beautiful  on  account  of  the 
character  of  the  plant — the  exceeding  roughness  of 
its  spiny  surface,  the  rude  shapes  it  takes  and  its 
darkness,  over  which  the  winged  flame  -  coloured 
blossoms  are  profusely  sprinkled.  And  when  we  see 
many  contiguous  bushes  they  do  not  lose  their  various 
individual  forms,  nor  do  the  blossoms,  however  abun- 
dant, unite,  as  is  the  case  with  the  broom,  into  very 
large  masses  of  brilliant  colour. 

I  like  to  come  upon  a  furze-patch  growing  on  a 
slope,  to  sit  below  it  and  look  up  over  its  surface, 
thrown  into  more  or  less  rounded  forms,  broken  and 
roughened  into  sprays  at  the  top,  as  of  a  sea  churned 
by  winds  and  cross-currents  to  lumpy  waves,  all 
splashed  and  crowned  as  it  were  with  flame-coloured 
froth.  With  a  clear  blue  sky  beyond  I  do  not  know 
in  all  nature  a  spectacle  to  excel  it  in  beauty.  It  is 
beautiful,  perhaps  above  all  things,  just  because  the 
blossoming  furze  is  not  the  "  sheet  of  gold  "  it  is  often 
described,  but  gold  of  a  flame-like  brilliance  sprinkled 
on  a  ground  of  darkest,  harshest  green.  Sheets  of 
brilliant  colour  are  not  always  beautiful.  I  have 
looked  on  leagues  of  forest  of  Erythrina  cmta-galli 
covering  a  wet  level  marsh  when  the  leafless  trees  were 
clothed  in  their  blood-red  blossoms  and  have  not  ad- 
mired the  spectacle.  Again,  1  have  ridden  through 
immense  fields  of  viper's  bugloss,  growing  as  high  as 
the  horse's  breast  and  so  dense  that  he  could  hardly 
force  his  way  through  it,  and  the  sheet  of  vivid  blue 
in  a  dazzling  sunlight  affected  me  very  disagreeably. 
It  is  the  same  with  cultivated  fields  of  daffodils,  tulips 


THE   FURZE    IN    ITS   GLORY         297 

and  other  flowers,  grown  to  supply  the  market  ;  the 
sight  pleases  best  at  a  distance  of  a  mile  or  half  a 
mile  ;  and  so  in  the  case  of  a  sheet  of  wild  hyacinths, 
it  delights  the  eye  because  it  is  seen  under  trees  with 
a  cloud  of  green  foliage  above  to  soften  and  bring  the 
vivid  hue  into  harmony  with  the  general  colouring. 

Now  in  the  furze,  or  the  dark  green  prickly  sprays, 
the  colour  and  roughness  of  which  are  never  wholly 
covered  and  extinguished  by  the  blossoms,  there  is  an 
appearance  which  has  probably  never  been  described 
and  perhaps  not  observed.  The  plant,  we  see, 
changes  its  colour  somewhat  with  the  seasons.  It  is 
darkest  in  winter,  when,  seen  at  a  distance  on  the  pale 
green  or  grey-green  chalk  downs,  it  looks  almost 
black.  Again,  in  summer  when  the  rusty  appearance 
which  follows  the  flowering  time  is  put  off,  the  new 
terminal  sprays  have  a  blue-green  or  glaucous  hue 
like  the  pine  and  juniper.  But  the  most  interesting 
change,  which  contributes  to  the  beauty  of  the  furze 
at  its  best,  is  in  the  spring,  when  the  spines  are  tipped 
with  straw-yellow  and  minute  lines  of  the  same  colour 
appear  along  the  spines  and  finer  stems,  and  the  effect 
of  these  innumerable  specks  and  lines  which  catch  the 
light  is  to  give  a  bronzed  appearance  to  the  dark  mass. 
It  is  curious  that  that  change  of  colour  does  not  always 
take  place  ;  in  many  places  you  find  the  plants  keep 
the  uniform  deep  green  of  winter  through  the  blos- 
soming season  ;  but  the  bronzed  aspect  is  the  loveliest, 
and  makes  the  most  perfect  setting  for  the  bloom. 

There  are  few  things  in  nature  that  more  delight 
the  eye  than  a  wild  common  or  other  incult  place 


298  THE   LAND'S   END 

overgrown  with  bramble  mixed  with  furze  in  flower 
and  bracken  in  its  vivid  green,  and  scattered  groups 
or  thickets  of  hawthorn  and  blackthorn,  with  tangles 
and  trails  of  ivy,  briony,  traveller's  joy  and  honey- 
suckle. Yet  the  loveliness  of  our  plant  in  such  sur- 
roundings is  to  my  mind  exceeded  by  the  furze  when 
it  possesses  the  entire  ground  and  you  have  its  splen- 
dour in  fullest  measure.  Then,  too,  you  can  best 
enjoy  its  fragrance.  This  has  a  peculiar  richness,  and 
has  been  compared  with  pineapple  and  cocoanut ;  I 
should  say  cocoanut  and  honey,  and  we  might  even 
liken  it  to  apple-tart  with  clove  for  scent  and  flavour. 
Anyway,  there  is  something  fruity  and  appetising  in 
the  smell  ;  but  this  is  not  all,  since  along  with  that 
which  appeals  to  the  lower  sense  there  is  a  more  subtle 
quality,  ethereal  and  soul-penetrating,  like  the  per- 
fume of  the  mignonette,  the  scented  orchis,  violet, 
bog  asphodel,  narcissus  and  vernal  squill.  It  may  be 
said  that  flower-scents  are  of  two  sorts  :  those  which, 
like  fruits,  suggest  flavours,  and  those  which  are 
wholly  unassociated  with  taste,  and  are  of  all  odours 
the  most  emotional  because  of  their  power  of  recall- 
ing past  scenes  and  events.  In  the  perfume  of  the 
furze  both  qualities,  the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual, 
are  combined  :  doubtless  it  was  the  higher  quality 
which  Swinburne  had  in  his  mind  when  he  sang — 

The  whin  was  frankincense  and  flame. 

But  we  regard  vision  as  the  higher  or  more  intel- 
lectual sense,  and  seeing  is  best  ;  and  it  was  the  sight 
of  blossoming  furze  which  caused  Linnaeus,  on  his 


THE    FURZE    IN    ITS   GLORY         299 

first  visit  to  England,  when  he  was  taken  to  see  it  at 
Putney  Heath,  to  fall  on  his  knees  and  thank  God 
for  creating  so  beautiful  a  plant. 

I  bring  in  this  old  story  so  that  the  cynical  reader 
may  not  be  cheated  of  his  smile.  He  it  is  who 
said,  and  I  believe  he  has  had  even  the  courage  to 
print  it,  that  there  was  nothing  spontaneous  in 
the  act  of  the  great  Swedish  naturalist,  that  he  had 
rehearsed  it  beforehand,  and  doubtless  dropped  upon 
his  knees  several  times  in  front  of  a  pier-glass  in  his 
bedroom  that  very  morning  to  make  himself  perfect 
in  the  action  before  being  driven  to  Putney. 

Linnaeus  is  good  enough  for  me,  and  for  the 
majority  of  us  I  imagine,  but  what  shall  we  say  of  the 
mockers,  the  spiritual  harpies  who  come  unbidden  to 
our  sacred  feasts  to  touch  and  handle  everything,  and 
to  defile  and  make  hateful  whatsoever  they  touch  ? 
Alas,  we  cannot  escape  and  cannot  silence  them,  and 
may  only  say  that  we  compassionate  them  ;  since, 
however  great  they  may  be  in  the  world,  and  though 
intellectually  they  may  be  but  little  lower,  than  the 
gods,  yet  do  they  miss  all  that  is  sweetest  and  most 
precious  in  life.  And  further,  we  can  only  hope  that 
when  they  have  finished  their  little  mocking  day,  that 
which  they  now  are  may  be  refashioned  by  wonderful 
Nature  into  some  better  thing — a  dark,  prickly  bush, 
let  us  say,  with  blossoms  that  are  frankincense  and 
flame. 

Let  this  same  fragrance  sweeten  our  imaginations  ; 
or,  better  still,  let  us  forget  that  such  beings  exist  in 
the  world — intellectuals  with  atrophied  hearts — and 


3oo  THE   LAND'S   END 

see  what  the  furze  looks  like  in  this  Land's  End 
district  where  it  most  abounds  and  the  earth  is  clothed 
with  it.  In  some  places  where  the  moorland  has  been 
reclaimed  and  parcelled  out  into  grass  fields  the  furze 
flourishes  on  the  stone  hedges  :  the  effect  is  here 
singular  as  well  as  magnificent,  when,  standing  on  a 
high  stone  wall,  you  survey  the  surrounding  country 
with  innumerable  furze-clothed  hedges  dividing  the 
green  fields  around  you  in  every  direction,  and  appear- 
ing like  stupendous  ropes  of  shining  golden  bloom. 
Hedge  beyond  hedge  they  stretch  away  for  miles  to 
grey  distant  hills  and  the  pale  blue  sky  beyond.  On 
some  hedges  the  plant  grows  evenly,  as  if  it  had  been 
cultivated  and  trimmed,  forming  a  smooth  rope  of 
bloom  and  black  prickles.  In  other  and  indeed  most 
instances,  the  rounded  big  luxuriant  bushes  occur  at 
intervals,  like  huge  bosses,  on  the  rope. 

Walking  by  one  of  these  hedges  in  a  very  strong 
sunlight  about  mid-May  when  the  bloom  is  in  its 
greatest  perfection,  the  sight  is  actually  dazzling  and 
hurts  by  the  intense  luminous  colour.  It  is  an  unusual 
experience,  but  after  a  mile  or  so  one  almost 
unconsciously  averts  or  veils  the  eye  in  passing  one 
of  these  splendid  bushes  on  which  the  blossoms  are 
too  closely  crowded. 

Perhaps  the  best  aspect  of  the  plant  is  that  of  the 
rough  unreclaimed  places  where  the  high  land  slopes 
down  to  the  cliff  and  the  furze  grows  luxuriantly 
along  the  edges  and  slopes  of  the  deep  clefts  or  little 
ravine-like  valleys,  the  beds  of  crystal  noisy  little 
water-courses,  peopled  with  troutlets  no  bigger  than 


THE   FURZE    IN   ITS   GLORY         301 

minnows.  Here  the  rude,  untamable  plant  has  its 
wildest  and  most  striking  appearance,  now  in  the  form 
of  a  huge  mound  where  several  bushes  are  closely 
interwoven,  and  now  growing  separately  like  ancient 
dwarf  trees,  mixed  with  brown  heath  and  grey  masses 
of  granite.  Here,  too,  you  may  come  upon  a  clump 
of  dwarf  blackthorn  bushes  thickly  covered  with  their 
luminous  crystalline  white  little  roses,  never  looking 
so  wonderful  in  their  immaculate  whiteness  as  when 
thus  seen  contrasted  with  the  rough  black  and  flame- 
colour  of  the  furze. 

Better  still,  you  can  here  see  the  yellow  and  orange 
flame  of  the  furze  against  the  blue  of  the  sea — a  mar- 
vellously beautiful  effect.  I  was  reminded  of  a  similar 
effect  observed  in  a  furzy  place  among  the  South 
Wiltshire  downs  a  year  before.  It  was  one  of  those 
days  when  there  are  big  dark  masses  of  cloud  in 
a  clear  sky  and  when  the  cloud  shadows  falling  on 
distant  woods  and  hills  give  them  a  deep  indigo  blue. 
The  furze  was  in  full  bloom  and  had  a  new  and 
strange  glory  in  my  eyes  when  seen  against  this  deep 
blue  of  the  distant  landscape. 

Yellow  and  blue — yellow  and  blue  !  A  lady  on 
the  other  side  of  the  globe  wrote  complaining  that 
these  two  colours  in  association  had  got  on  her  nerves 
on  account  of  something  I  had  said  in  some  book. 
That  was  the  fault  of  the  writing.  In  nature  they 
never  get  on  our  nerves  :  they  surprise  us,  because 
the  sight  is  not  an  everyday  one,  and  in  some  cases 
where  they  occupy  a  large  field  they  intoxicate  the 
mind  with  their  unparalleled  loveliness.  It  has  ever 


302  THE   LAND'S   END 

been  a  delight  to  me  just  before  harvest  time  to  walk 
in  fine  weather  near  the  sea  just  to  look  at  the  red 
gold  of  the  ripe  corn  against  the  blue  water.  We 
get  a  similar  effect  from  these  two  complementary 
colours  at  sunset  when  the  clouds  are  flushed  yellow 
and  orange  in  a  blue  sky.  Also  in  the  beech  woods 
in  October  the  sight  of  the  great  trees  in  their  magni- 
ficent red-gold  foliage  would  not  impress  us  so  deeply 
but  for  the  blue  sky  seen  through  and  above  the 
wood. 


CHAPTER  XX 
PILGRIMS    AT   THE    LAND'S    END 

How  this  book  came  to  be  written — Fascination  of  the  Land's  End 
— Aged  pilgrims — A  vision  of  the  land  of  rest — An  Unsentimental 
Journey  through  Cornwall — A  horde  of  trippers  from  Lancashire 
— A  sentiment  to  be  cherished — An  appeal. 

I  RECALL  now  that  I  did  not  come  to  Cornwall 
to  write  a  book  about  it,  or  any  part  of  it.  But 
like  many  others  I  had  to  see  the  Land's  End  ; 
and  it  was  winter,  when  the  Wiltshire  Downs,  where 
it  was  my  desire  to  be,  are  bleak,  and  I  had  a  cold  to 
get  rid  of,  so  I  came  to  the  "rocky  land  of  strangers," 
to  look  once  in  my  life  on  the  famous  headland  and 
return  with  the  wheatear  and  stone  curlew  to  the 
lonely  green  hills.  Being  here  I  put  down  some 
impressions  of  gulls  and  fishing-boats  at  St.  Ives  for 
a  weekly  journal  ;  other  impressions  followed,  and 

303 


304  THE   LAND'S   END 

because  the  place  held  me  month  after  month,  and  the 
old  habit  of  taking  notes,  or  stick-gathering,  even  when 
the  sticks  are  of  no  more  use  than  the  vast  store  of 
stolen  objects  ^/hich  my  friend's  pet  white  rat,  who 
has  the  run  of  a  big  house,  is  accustomed  to  accumu- 
late, the  material  grew  on  my  hands,  until  in  the  end 
I  determined  to  put  the  best  of  it  in  a  volume.  In  that 
way  the  book  and  every  chapter  grew.  One  chapter, 
headed  "  Bolerium ",  contained  my  impressions  of 
the  famous  headland  itself,  and  having  written  it  1 
imagined  there  would  be  no  more  for  me  to  say  on 
that  subject.  Nevertheless,  I  continued  to  haunt  the 
spot ;  familiarity  had  not  lessened  its  fascination,  and 
there,  by  chance,  one  day  in  spring,  I  witnessed  a 
scene  which  suggested,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  com- 
pelled me  to  write,  this  additional  chapter  as  a  con- 
clusion to  the  book. 

There  were  days  at  the  headland  when  I  observed 
a  goodish  number  of  elderly  men  among  the  pilgrims, 
some  very  old,  and  this  at  first  surprised  me,  but 
by  and  by  it  began  to  seem  only  natural.  I  was  par- 
ticularly impressed  one  day  at  noon  in  early  spring  in 
clear  but  cold  weather  with  a  biting  north-east  wind, 
when  I  found  six  or  seven  aged  men  sitting  about  on 
the  rocks  that  lie  scattered  over  the  green  slope  be- 
hind the  famous  promontory.  They  were  too  old  or 
too  feeble  to  venture  down  on  the  rough  headland  : 
their  companions  had  strayed  away,  some  to  the 
fishing  cove,  others  along  the  higher  cliffs,  and  left 
them  there  to  rest.  They  were  in  great-coats  with 
scarves  and  comforters  round  their  necks,  and  hats  or 


OLD   FARM,   LAND'S  END 


To  face  page  304 


PILGRIMS   AT   THE   LAND'S   END     305 

caps  drawn  well  down  ;  and  they  sat  mostly  in  de- 
jected attitudes,  bending  forward,  their  hands  resting 
on  the  handles  of  their  sticks,  some  with  their  chins 
on  their  hands,  but  all  gazed  in  one  direction  over 
the  cold  grey  sea.  Strangers  to  each  other,  unlike 
in  life  and  character,  coming  from  widely  separated 
places,  some  probably  from  countries  beyond  the 
ocean,  yet  all  here,  silently  gazing  in  one  direction 
beyond  that  rocky  foreland,  with  the  same  look  of 
infinite  weariness  on  their  grey  faces  and  in  their  dim 
sad  eyes,  as  if  one  thought  and  feeling  and  motive  had 
drawn  them  to  this  spot.  Can  it  be  that  the  senti- 
ment or  fancy  which  is  sown  in  our  minds  in  child- 
hood and  lies  asleep  and  forgotten  in  us  through  most 
of  our  years,  revives  and  acquires  towards  the  end 
a  new  and  strange  significance  when  we  have  entered 
upon  our  second  childhood  ?  The  period,  I  mean, 
when  we  recover  our  ancient  mental  possessions — the 
heirlooms  which  cannot  be  alienated  or  lost,  which 
have  descended  to  us  from  our  remotest  progenitors 
through  centuries  and  thousands  of  years.  These 
old  men  cannot  see  the  objects  which  appear  to 
younger  eyes — the  distant  passing  ships,  and  the  land 
— that  dim,  broken  line  as  of  a  low  cloud  on  the 
horizon,  of  the  islands  :  their  sight  is  altered  from 
what  it  was,  yet  is,  perhaps,  now  able  to  discern 
things  invisible  to  us — other  islands,  uncharted,  not 
the  Cassiterides.  What  are  they,  these  other  islands, 
and  what  do  we  know  of  them  ?  Nothing  at  all ; 
indeed,  nothing  can  be  known  to  the  generality  ; 
only  these  life-weary  ancients,  sitting  on  rocks  and 


306  THE   LAND'S   END 

gazing  at  vacancy,  might  enlighten  us  if  they  would. 
Undoubtedly  there  are  differences  of  sight  among 
them  which  would  make  their  descriptions  vary,  but 
they  would  probably  all  agree  in  affirming  that  the 
scene  before  them  has  no  resemblance  to  the  earlier 
vision.  This  grey-faced  very  old  man  with  his  chin 
on  his  hands,  who  looks  as  if  he  had  not  smiled  these 
many  years,  would  perhaps  smile  now  if  he  were  to 
recall  that  former  vision,  which  came  by  teaching 
and  served  well  enough  during  his  hot  youth  and 
strenuous  middle  age.  He  does  not  see  before  him 
a  beautiful  blessed  land  bright  with  fadeless  flowers, 
nor  a  great  multitude  of  people  in  shining  garments 
and  garlands  who  will  come  down  to  the  shore  to 
welcome  him  with  sounds  of  shouting  and  singing 
and  playing  on  instruments  of  divers  forms,  and  who 
will  lead  him  in  triumph  to  the  gardens  of  everlasting 
delight  and  to  mansions  of  crystal  with  emerald  and 
amethyst  colonnades  and  opal  domes  and  turrets 
and  pinnacles.  Those  glories  and  populous  realms  of 
joy  have  quite  vanished  :  he  sees  now  only  what  his 
heart  desires — a  silent  land  of  rest.  No  person  will 
greet  him  there  ;  he  will  land  and  go  up  alone  into 
that  empty  and  solitary  place,  a  still  grey  wilderness 
extending  inland  and  upward  hundreds  of  leagues, 
an  immeasurable  distance,  into  infinity,  and  rising  to 
mountain  ridges  compared  with  which  the  Himalayas 
are  but  mole-hills.  The  sky  in  that  still  land  is  always 
pale  grey-blue  in  colour,  and  the  earth,  too,  is  grey 
like  the  rocks,  and  the  trees  have  a  grey-green  foliage 
— trees  more  ancient  in  appearance  than  the  worn 


PILGRIMS   AT   THE   LAND'S   END     307 

granite  hills,  with  gnarled  and  buttressed  trunks  like 
vast  towers  and  immense  horizontal  branches,  casting 
a  slight  shade  over  many  acres  of  ground.  Onwards 
and  upwards,  with  eyes  downcast,  he  will  slowly  take 
his  devious  way  to  the  interior,  feeling  the  earth  with 
his  staff,  in  search  of  a  suitable  last  resting-place. 
And  when  he  has  travelled  many,  many  leagues  and 
has  found  it — a  spot  not  too  sunny  nor  too  deeply 
shaded,  where  the  old  fallen  dead  leaves  and  dry  moss 
have  formed  a  thick  soft  couch  to  recline  on  and  a 
grey  exposed  root  winding  over  the  earth  offers  a  rest 
to  his  back — there  at  length  he  will  settle  himself. 
There  he  will  remain  motionless  and  contented 
for  ever  in  that  remote  desert  land  where  is  no 
sound  of  singing  bird  nor  of  running  water  nor  of 
rain  or  wind  in  the  grey  ancient  trees  :  waking  and 
sleeping  he  will  rest  there,  dreaming  little  and  think- 
ing less,  while  year  by  year  and  age  by  age  the 
memory  of  the  world  of  passion  and  striving  of 
which  he  was  so  unutterably  tired  grows  fainter 
and  fainter  in  his  mind.  And  he  will  have  neither 
joy  nor  sorrow,  nor  love  nor  hate,  nor  wish  to 
know  them  any  more  ;  and  when  he  remembers  his 
fellow-men  it  will  comfort  him  to  think  that  his 
peace  will  never  be  broken  by  the  sight  of  human 
face  or  the  sound  of  human  speech,  since  never  by 
any  chance  will  any  wanderer  from  the  world  discover 
him  in  that  illimitable  wilderness. 

This  may  not  have  been  the  precise  vision  of  that 
old  man,  sitting  on  a  rock  with  chin  resting  on  his 
hands  ;  it  is  merely  my  interpretation  of  his  appear- 


3o8  THE   LAND'S   END 

ance  and  expression  at  that  spot — his  grey  weary 
face,  his  dejected  attitude,  his  immobility  ;  his  and 
that  of  the  five  or  six  others — those  grey  old  men 
who,  by  a  strange  chance,  had  all  come  to  the  place 
one  day  at  the  same  hour,  and  had  been  left  to  their 
own  melancholy  thoughts  by  their  younger,  more 
active  companions.  It  was  mere  chance,  but  the 
sight  profoundly  impressed  me  and  gave  me  a  more 
vivid  idea  than  I  had  hitherto  had  of  the  fascination 
this  last  rocky  headland  has  for  our  minds. 

Then,  when  the  strange  spectacle  of  those  aged 
men  on  that  bleak  day,  seated,  each  on  his  rock, 
twenty  or  thirty  yards  apart,  absorbed  in  his  own 
mournful  thoughts  and  gazing  out  fixedly  on  the 
troubled  sea,  was  still  fresh,  other  incidents  came  to 
keep  the  subject  uppermost  in  my  mind  and  to  com- 
pel me  to  return  to  it  and  to  make  in  conclusion 
a  practical  suggestion. 

One  of  the  "  incidents  "  mentioned  was  the  perusal 
of  a  book  on  Cornwall  which  I  picked  up  in  Penzance 
for  the  sake  of  the  excellent  illustrations  rather  than 
to  read  it.  I  had  already  read  or  glanced  through 
forty  or  fifty  or,  it  may  be,  a  hundred  books  on  Corn- 
wall with  little  pleasure  or  profit  and  did  not  want  to 
read  any  more.  It  was  An  Unsentimental  Journey 
through  Cornwall,  by  the  author  of  John  Halifax, 
Gentleman^  a  lady  who  could  not  be  unsentimental  if 
she  tried  ever  so  hard. 

The  book  is  dated  1884,  but  a  few  years  before 
the  author's  death,  when  she  was  a  feeble  old  lady 
whose  long  life-work  of  producing  novels  was  over, 


PILGRIMS   AT  THE   LAND'S   END     309 

and  her  time  in  Cornwall  was  limited  to  seventeen 
September  days.  We  are  concerned  only  with  her 
visit  to  the  Land's  End,  and  I  quote  here  a  portion  of 
her  account  of  it  : — 

"  It  would  be  hard  if,  after  journeying  thus  far  and 


NEAR    SENNEN    COVE 

looking  forward  to  it  so  many  years,  the  day  on  which 
we  went  to  the  Land's  End  should  turn  out  a  wet 
day  !  .  .  .  We  wondered  for  the  last  time,  as  we 
had  wondered  for  half  a  century,  what  the  Land's  End 
would  be  like. 


310  THE   LAND'S   END 

"  At  first  our  thought  had  been  What  in  the  world 
shall  we  do  here  for  two  mortal  hours  ?  Now  we 
wished  we  had  two  whole  days.  A  sunset,  a  sunrise, 
a  starlit  night,  what  would  they  have  been  in  this 
grand  lonely  place — almost  as  lonely  as  a  ship  at 
sea  !  .  .  . 

"  The  bright  day  was  darkening,  and  a  soft  grey- 
ness  began  to  creep  over  land  and  sea.  No,  not  soft, 
that  is  the  very  last  adjective  applicable  to  the  Land's 
End.  Even  on  that  calm  day  there  was  a  fresh  wind 
—there  must  be  always  a  wind — and  the  air  felt 
sharper  and  more  salt  than  any  sea-air  I  ever  knew, 
stimulating  too,  so  that  our  nerves  were  strung  to  the 
highest  pitch  of  excitement.  We  felt  able  to  do  any- 
thing without  fear  and  without  fatigue.  .  .  .  Still, 
though  a  narrow  and  giddy  path,  there  was  a  path, 
and  the  exploit,  though  a  little  risky,  was  not  fool- 
hardy. We  should  have  been  bitterly  sorry  not  to 
have  done  it — not  to  have  stood  for  one  grand  ten 
minutes  where  in  all  our  lives  we  may  never  stand 
again,  at  the  furthest  point  where  footing  is  possible, 
gazing  out  on  that  magnificent  circle  of  sea  which 
sweeps  over  the  submerged  land  of  Lyonesse,  far,  far 
away  into  the  wide  Atlantic.  .  .  . 

"  Half  a  mile  from  Marazion  the  rain  ceased,  and 
a  light  like  that  of  a  rising  moon  began  to  break 
through  the  clouds.  What  a  night  it  might  be,  or 
might  have  been,  could  we  have  stayed  at  the  Land's 
End! 

"  That  ghastly  c  might  have  been  '  !  It  is  in  great 
things  as  in  small,  the  worry,  the  torment,  the  para- 


PILGRIMS  AT   THE   LAND'S   END     311 

lyzing  burden  of  life.  Away  with  it !  We  have 
done  our  best  to  be  happy  and  we  have  been  happy. 
We  have  seen  the  Land's  End." 

Her  cheerfulness  makes  one's  eyes  moisten — that 
one  day  at  the  Land's  End,  when  her  life's  work  was 
over,  when  in  spite  of  her  years  and  weak  nerves  she 
ventured  painfully  down  and  out  among  those  rough 
crags,  assisted  by  her  guide  and  companion,  for  one 
grand  ten  minutes  on  the  outermost  rock — the  fulfil- 
ment of  a  dream  of  fifty  years  ! 

She  was  a  very  gentle,  tender-hearted  woman,  as 
sweet  and  lovable  a  soul  as  ever  dwelt  on  earth,  but 
her  mind  was  only  an  average  one,  essentially  medi- 
ocre ;  in  her  numerous  works  she  never  rose  above 
the  commonplace.  There  are  thousands  of  women 
all  over  the  country  who  could  produce  as  many  and 
as  good  books  as  hers  if  they  were  industrious  enough 
and  thought  it  worth  their  while  to  take  up  novel- 
writing  as  a  profession.  She  wrote  for  the  million 
and  is  understood  by  them,  and  I  take  it  that  in  her 
dream  and  sentiment  about  the  Land's  End  she 
represents  her  public — the  mass  of  the  educated 
women  in  England — just  as  she  represents  their 
feeling  about  love  and  the  domestic  virtues  and  life 
generally  in  her  John  Halifax^  Mistress  and  Maid^  A 
Life  for  a  Life  and  scores  of  other  works. 

But  books,  however  eloquent  and  heart-searching 
they  may  be,  cannot  produce  an  effect  comparable  to 
that  of  seeing  and  hearing — to  the  sight  and  sound 
of  emotion  in  men's  faces  and  voices  and  in  their 
words.  The  passage  I  have  quoted,  and  all  the  other 


312  THE   LAND'S   END 

passages  on  the  subject  in  the  other  books  I  had  read, 
gave  me  no  such  vivid  idea  of  the  strength  of  the 
sentiment  we  are  considering  as  did  the  other  incident 
I  wish  to  relate  when,  on  May  24,  at  Penzance 
station,  I  witnessed  the  arrival,  in  four  trains,  of 
about  twelve  hundred  trippers  from  some  of  the 
cotton-spinning  centres  forty  or  fifty  miles  north  of 
Manchester.  The  first  train  steamed  into  the  station, 
where  a  crowd  had  gathered  to  see  the  horde  of 
strange  people  from  the  north,  at  10.45  >  *ne  ^as^  °^ 
the  four  arrived  a  little  before  12  at  noon.  The 
return  journey  would  begin  at  6.30  on  the  same  day: 
the  entire  distance  to  and  from  Penzance  was  con- 
siderably over  eight  hundred  miles  ;  the  time  it  took, 
twenty-six  to  twenty-eight  hours,  and  the  time  the 
travellers  had  at  their  disposal  at  their  destination  was 
about  seven  hours.  I  was  amazed  that  twelve 
hundred  men  had  been  found  to  undertake  such  a 
journey  just  to  see  Penzance — one  of  the  least  in- 
teresting towns  in  the  kingdom  ;  but  when  I  mixed 
with  and  talked  with  them  on  their  arrival,  they  as- 
sured me  they  had  not  come  for  such  an  object  and 
would  be  content  to  go  back  without  seeing  Penzance. 
Nor  did  they  come  for  the  sake  of  anything  in  fine 
scenery  which  Cornwall  could  show  them  ;  North 
Wales  with  its  bold  sea-coast  and  magnificent  moun- 
tain scenery  was  easily  accessible  to  them.  What  they 
came  to  see  was  the  Land's  End. 

The  Cornishmen  who  were  present  could  not 
understand  this.  I  talked  with  one  poor  fellow,  who 
sat  down  on  a  bench  looking  very  pale,  saying  that 


PILGRIMS   AT   THE   LAND'S   END     313 

after  thirteen  hours  in  the  train  without  a  wink  of 
sleep  he  felt  very  tired  ;  but  he  was  greatly  dis- 
appointed at  not  having  got  a  seat  in  the  first  lot  of 
conveyances  which  were  driving  off  loaded  with  his 
fellow  travellers  to  the  Land's  End,  and  feared  that  he 
might  miss  seeing  it  after  all.  Among  those  who 
had  gathered  round  to  hear  what  was  said  were  two 
old  Penzance  men  and  they  laughed  heartily.  "  Why," 
said  one,  "  I've  been  here  within  ten  miles  of  the 
Land's  End  all  my  life  and  have  never  seen  it." 
"  I  can  say  as  much,  and  more,"  said  the  other  ; 
"  I've  never  seen  it  and  never  want  to  see  it." 
"  Perhaps,"  1  remarked,  "  if  you  had  been  born  five 
hundred  or  five  thousand  miles  away  you  would  have 
felt  differently  about  it."  The  poor  pale  Lancastrian 
looked  pleased.  "  That's  true  !  "  he  exclaimed.  "  I've 
always  wanted  to  see  the  Land's  End,  and  it's  the 
same  with  all  of  us  :  we've  come  to  see  it  and  for 
nothing  else." 

It  was  the  literal  truth,  as  I  found  by  hanging  about 
and  talking  with  these  men  from  the  north  all  that 
day,  watching  them  going  and  returning.  But  the 
motor  buses,  char-a-bancs  and  other  vehicles  were  not 
enough  to  take  them  all,  and  when  it  came  to  three 
o'clock  and  half-past  three,  and  there  was  but  time 
left  to  go  with  all  speed,  look  for  a  few  brief  minutes 
at  the  rocks,  and  hasten  back  in  time  for  the  last  train, 
the  poor  fellows  began  offering  five  shillings  per  man 
to  be  driven  there  and  back,  and  then  at  the  last  some 
offered  ten  shillings.  But  it  was  too  late  and  they 
could  not  be  taken  ! 


3H  THE   LAND'S   END 

Is  this  sentiment,  which  is  not  confined  to  our  island 
country  but  survives  in  the  transplanted  race  in  other 
regions  of  the  globe,  this  feeling  which  the  matter- 
of-fact  Cornishman  laughs  at  and  which  may  make 
many  of  us  smile  when  we  meet  with  it  in  a  printed 
book,  but  is  in  us  all  the  same  and  a  part  of  our  life 
— is  this  sentiment  of  any  value  and  worth  cherishing  ? 
I  take  it  that  it  is,  since  if  we  were  stripped  of  senti- 
ment, illusions  and  such  traditions,  romance  and 
dreams,  as  we  inherit  or  which  gather  about  and 
remain  with  us  to  the  end  of  our  days,  we  should  be 
beggared  indeed.  Well,  let  it  be  so,  it  may  be  said 
in  reply  ;  'tis  in  you  and  in  many  of  us,  and  some 
have  it  not,  and  that's  all  there  is  to  be  said  about  it — 
why  then  speak  of  cherishing  ?  For  the  following 
reason  in  this  particular  case  :  the  sentiment  relates  to 
a  locality,  a  spot  of  land  with  peculiar  features  and 
character,  a  rocky  headland  with  the  boundless  ocean 
in  front  and  the  desolate  wind-swept  moor  behind. 
These  features,  an  image  of  which  is  carried  in  our 
minds  from  childhood,  are  bound  up  with  and  are 
part  and  parcel  of  the  feeling,  so  that  to  make  any 
change  in  such  a  spot,  to  blow  up  the  headland,  for 
instance,  as  any  one  could  do  with  a  few  shillings'  worth 
of  dynamite,  or  to  alter  and  deface  the  surface  of  the 
adjacent  land  and  build  big  houses  and  other  ugly 
structures  on  it,  would  be  felt  by  every  pilgrim  as  an 
indignity,  a  hateful  vandalism.  We  have  seen  in  the 
case  of  Hindhead  and  of  many  other  places  which 
powerfully  attract  us,  what  the  greed  and  philistinism 
of  man  will  do  to  destroy  an  ancient  charm.  A  man 


PILGRIMS   AT   THE   LAND'S   END     315 

may  do  what  he  likes  with  his  own — a  frightful  liberty 
when  we  remember  how  God's  footstool  has  been 
parcelled  out  among  private  persons,  and  what  brutish 
men,  or  men  without  the  sense  of  beauty,  have  done 
and  may  do  to  spoil  it.  I  suppose  that  if  Sir  Edmund 
Antrobus  thought  proper  he  could  run  up  a  red-brick 
hotel  or  sanatorium  high  as  Hankey's  Mansions  at 
Stonehenge  :  but  not  Stonehenge,  nor  Mona,  nor 
Senlac,  nor  that  hoary  fane  where  Britain  buries  her 
great  dead,  nor  any  castle  or  cathedral,  or  tower  or 
river  or  mountain  or  plain  in  all  the  land  draws  us  so 
powerfully  as  this  naked  moor  and  rude  foreland  with 
its  ancient  dim  memories  and  associations.  And  we 
now  see  what  is  being  done  with  it — how  plots  of  land 
for  building  purposes  are  being  sold  right  and  left, 
and  the  place  in  every  way  vulgarised  and  degraded. 

Undoubtedly  there  are  men  so  devoid  of  senti- 
ment and  imagination  that  they  would  not  hesitate  to 
stamp  out  the  last  beautiful  thing  on  earth,  if  its 
beauty,  or  some  sentiment  connected  with  it  which 
made  it  seem  beautiful,  is  the  only  reason  or  the  only 
excuse  that  can  be  given  for  its  existence.  But  all 
are  not  of  this  character,  and  to  those  who  have 
something  besides  Cornish  tin  and  copper  in  their 
souls,  who  are  not  wholly  devoted  to  their  own  and, 
incidentally,  to  their  county's,  material  prosperity,  I 
would  appeal  to  rescue  from  degradation  and  to  pre- 
serve unspoilt  for  all  time  this  precious  spot  to  which 
pilgrims  resort  from  all  the  land. 

It  is  not  necessary,  I  hope,  to  describe  the  Land's 
End  as  the  county's  best  "asset"  or  as  the  "goose 


3i6  THE   LAND'S   END 

that  lays  the  golden  eggs  ",  or  by  some  such  abomin- 
able phrase,  which  is  yet  well  understood  by  all  since 
it  appeals  to  the  baser  nature  in  every  man — to  his 
greed  and  his  cunning ;  still,  it  might  be  well  to 
remind  even  those  who  are  wholly  concerned  with 
material  things  that  the  sentiment  they  make  light  of 
probably  exists  in  some  degree  in  a  majority  of  the 
inhabitants  of  this  country — which,  be  it  remembered, 
is  mainly  Anglo-Saxon,  a  sentimental  race,  to  use  the 
word  in  its  better  sense — and  that  it  is  the  desire 
of  most  persons  to  see  the  Land's  End  ;  also  that 
probably  nine  of  every  ten  visitors  to  Cornwall  think 
of  that  headland  as  their  objective  point. 

To  save  this  spot  it  would  undoubtedly  have  to  be 
taken  from  private  ownership  ;  and,  given  the  desire, 
there  would  be  small  difficulty  in  obtaining  an  Act  of 
Parliament  for  the  compulsory  sale  of  a  strip  of  the 
sea-front  with,  let  us  say,  a  couple  of  thousand  acres 
of  the  adjoining  moor.  The  buildings  which  now 
deform  the  place,  the  unneeded  hotels,  with  stables, 
shanties,  zinc  bungalows  sprawling  over  the  cliff,  and 
the  ugly  big  and  little  houses  could  be  cleared  away, 
leaving  only  the  ancient  village  of  St.  Sennen,  the 
old  farm-houses,  the  coastguard  and  Trinity  House 
stations,  and  the  old  fishing  hamlet  under  the  cliff. 

If  a  Cornish  Society,  formed  for  the  purpose,  and 
working  with  the  County  Council,  could  not  do  this 
without  outside  help,  the  money  needed  could  no 
doubt  be  easily  raised  by  public  subscription.  We 
know  that  very  large  sums  are  frequently  given  by 
the  public  for  similar  purposes,  also  for  various  other 


PILGRIMS  AT  THE  LAND'S  END 

purposes  which  appeal  to  comparatively  very  few,  as, 
for  example,  when  the  sum  of  ^"45,000  was  recently 
given  by  private  subscribers  to  purchase  the  Rokeby 
"  Venus "  for  the  National  Gallery.  Yet  for  every 
single  subscriber  to  that  fund,  and,  I  may  say,  for 
every  person  in  England  who  regards  that  canvas  as 
a  valuable  acquisition,  there  are  probably  thousands 
who  would  gladly  see  the  Land's  End  made  a  National 
possession,  and  who  would  willingly  subscribe  for 
such  an  object. 


INDEX 


Adder,  coming  forth  in  winter,  4, 
205  ;  singular  colouring  of, 
269 

Badger,  strange  action  of  a,  249 
Eibliothcca  Cornubiensis,  187 
Birds,  a  memory  of,  1 1  ;  feeding 

the,  at  St.  Ives,  14;  wintering 

in  West    Cornwall,    89-101  ; 

flying   from    the   frost,    210; 

cruelties  practised  on,  2 1  2-14  ; 

crippled,   114,  217;  visitation 

of,   222  ;  effect  of  great  frost 

on,  226 
Blackbird,  92,  225 ;  distress  of,  on 

washing-day,  270 
Blackthorn,  42 
Bolerium.     See  Land's  End 
Books  on  Cornwall,   55-7,  130, 

136-7,  308 
Borde,     Andrew,     on     Cornish 

speech,  107 
Borlase,  William,  on  the  Cornish 

seal,  254-5 
Bottrell,     William,     Stories    and 

Folklore  of  West  Cornwall,  1 96 
Bracken,  colour  of  dead,  206 
Brett,  the  marine  artist,  story  of, 

170 

Browning,  Dramatic  Idylls,  82 
Bunting.     See  Corn  Bunting  and 

Yellowhammer 

Burgomaster,  Glaucous  gull,  23 
Bush-beating,  214 
Buttercup,  beauty  of  the,  288 

Calderon's  Life's  a  Dream,  66 


Campbell,  Rev,  R.  J.,  on  drunken- 
ness, 127 

Cape  Cornwall,  43,  52 

Carew,  Richard,  on  Cornish 
farmers,  32;  on  cliff  foxes, 
34;  on  tin-mining,  133;  his 
book  praised,  135-6,  187 

—  Thomas,  lyrist,  a  Cornishman, 
187 

Carter,  Mr.  R.  H.,  story  of  a 
badger  told  by,  249 

Cassiterides  (Scilly  Islands),  305 

Castle-an-Dinas,  273 

Chaffinch,  as  a  rare  bird,  246 

Chapel  Cam  Brea,  54 

Charlock,  an  admirer  of,  280 

Chiffchaff,  return  and  abundance 
of  the,  269 

Children  in  Cornwall,  love  of, 
7  ;  lost,  8  ;  power  of,  1 1 8-20 

Collins,   Wilkie,   on  the  Land's 

^  End,  54 

Colt's-foot,  sweet-scented,  276-9 

Columbine,  wild,  283 

Conger  eel,  fight  with  seal,  252 

Connemara,  Cornwall's,  29 

Corn  bunting,  winter  singing  of, 
3,  268 

Cornish  speech,  104 

Courtney,  Lord,  on  West  Corn- 
wall, 194 

Courthope,  Paradise  of  Birds,  267 
Cows,  Cornish  breed,  23,  43  ;  in 

Penzance  market,  122-4 
Cruelty,  charge  of,  1 44-6  ;  prac- 
tised on  birds,  212-14 


319 


320 


THE   LAND'S   END 


Curlew,  wintering,  44  ;  killed  by 
sparrow-hawk,  252 

Darwin,  an  incident  related  by,  82 

Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  on  the  Land's 
End,  57 

Dawn  in  Britain,  The.  See 
Doughty 

Daws,  feeding  the,  at  St.  Ives, 
1 2-1 8;  on  the  cliffs,  65; 
the  donkey's  friends,  9 1  ;  feed- 
ing the,  at  Zennor,  225  ;  after 
the  great  frost,  238;  impu- 
dence of,  266 

Dewar,  Mr.  G.  A.  B.,  on  great 
bird  visitation,  2 1 1 

Dog,  a  greedy  sheep-,  1 4 ;  and 
fox,  34;  cunning  of,  181 

Dogfish,  23 

Donkey,  the  Land's  End,  90 ; 
daws'  friendship  with,  92 

Doughty,  Charles  M.,  on  "  swart 
Belerians,"  105 

Dunnock,  225  ;  protecting  nest 
of,  270 

Ebblethwaite,  Mr.,  gull  protection 
by,  at  St.  Ives,  219-20 

Erythrina  crista-galli,  forest  of,  in 
bloom,  296 

Evelyn,  John,  on  the  furze,  294 

Expression  in  flowers,  290 

Farmers,  Cornish,  character  of, 
36 ;  tenacious  of  their  hold- 
mgs>  37t  politics  of,  no; 
their  rough  home-life,  1 1 4 

Feme,  Sir  John,  on  azure  in 
blazonry,  291 

Field-fare,  44,  92,  223,  267 

Fire,  furze  and  turf,  233 

Fishermen  at  St.  Ives,  6  ;  love 
of  children,  7 

Fishing-boats,  appearance  at  St. 
Ives,  10-12 


Flowers,  in  winter,  275  ;  blue, 
283-6;  glory  of,  287-90;  a 
secret  of  the  charm  of,  290 

Fox,  Carew's  account  of  the, 
34  ;  cliff,  5 1  ;  prowess  of  a, 
228-9  >  attacked  by  raven, 
230-1 

Fowls,  34;  raided  by  fox,  228 

Fritillary,  first  sight  of  the  wild, 
288 

Frogs,  annual  carnival  of,  268-9 

Frost,  birds  driven  by,  210; 
effect  on  bird-life,  223-39 

Fuller,  Thomas,  on  England's 
"  observables,"  I 

Furze,  an  intractable  plant,  42  ; 
as  fuel,  1 1 6 ;  first  sight  of, 
288;  in  literature,  294;  as 
fodder,  294-5  ;  beauty  of  the 
effect  of  contrast,  295  ;  varia- 
tion in  colour,  297  ;  fragrance 
of,  298  ;  Cornish,  300 ;  in- 
tensity of  colour  in,  300—302 

Gannets,  fishing  methods  of,  74-8  ; 
contrasted  with  gulls,  78 ; 
taking  pilchards  from  the  seine, 
82  ;  preying  on  sand  eels,  83  ; 
flight  of,  85  ;  disastrous  acci- 
dent to,  at  Whitesand  Bay,  86 

Gilpin,  William,  on  Cornish 
scenery,  30,  194 

Godrevy  Lighthouse,  242 

Goldcrest,  wintering  in  West 
Cornwall,  97 

Goldfinches,  autumn  migration  of, 
223 

Goonhilly  Downs,  290 

Greybird.     See  Thrush 

Great  Northern  Diver,  sudden 
attack  on  a  gull  by  a,  80  ;  in 
Hayle  Estuary,  256 

Guillemot,  preyed  on  by  great 
black-backed  gull,  251  ;  mi- 
grating, 267 


INDEX 


321 


Guize-dancing  at  St.  Ives,  176-8 
Gull,  common,  20 

—  black-backed,  20 

—  black-headed,  20,  68 

—  glaucous,  a  rare  visitor,  23 

—  great  black-backed,  20  ;  guil- 
lemot killed  by,  251  ;  colony 
of,  at  Land's  End,  68 

Gurnard's  Head,  52  ;  a  favourite 
haunt,  69 

Hake,  Gordon,  on  wind-tormented 
trees,  42 

Hawker,  of  Morwenstow,  Corn- 
wall's poet,  1 86 

Hayle  Estuary,  240 

Headlands,  appearance  and  wild 
life  of,  50  ;  birds  of  the,  65 

Heath  fires,  233-4 

Heather,  glory  of  the,  288-9  > 
Cornish,  290 

Hedges,  character  of  English, 
39 ;  Cornish  stone,  43-9  ;  ivy 
on,  46-8 

Hedge-sparrow.     See  Dunnock 

Hook,  J.  C.,  the  artist,  story  of, 
192 

HuefFer,  Mr.  Ford  Madox,  on 
class  divisions  in  England,  284 

Humour,  Cornish,  150;  adven- 
tures in  search  of,  154  ;  quality 
of,  156;  the  funny  man's, 
163  ;  Cornish  and  English, 
1 66 ;  unconscious,  of  two  kinds, 
169 

Hunt,  Robert,  Popular  Romances 
of  the  West  of  England,  196 

"  Hunter's  Vision,"  the,  72 

Hyacinth,  wild,  first  sight  of,  288 

Ivy,  on  stone  hedges,  46-8 

Jackdaws.     See  Daws 
James,  Prof.  William,  on  drunken- 
ness, 128 


John  Cocking.      See  Shag 
Kestrel,  232 


Land's    End,   50 ;    sentiment  of 

the,   52;  in  books,   56;  dark 

tempestuous   evenings  at,    58 ; 

the  scene  of  ancient  tragedies, 

6 1  ;   fascination  of  the,    304; 

aged  pilgrims  at,    304;    Mrs. 

G.    L.    Craik   on   the,   308 ; 

horde  of  trippers  to,  312-13  ; 

an  appeal  concerning  the,  314- 

17 
Lark,  sky-,  92,  223  ;  departure 

of,  267 
Launce,  habits  of,  83  ;  preyed  on 

by  bass  and  pollack,  84 
Lelant,   towans  at,   226;    ferry, 

242 
Linnaeus,  on  first  seeing  the  furze 

in  bloom,  298—9 
Lizard,  lights  of  the,  59 
Logan  Stone,  52,  75 
Longships  Lighthouse,  59 

Madron,  colt's-foot  in  church- 
yard at,  279 

Magpie,  strange  nesting-place  of 
a,  96  ;  language,  97 

Man,  the  small  dark  Cornish, 
103-4;  blonde,  105 

Marazion,  29,  122 

Market  Jew  Street,  124 

Methodism,  60  ;  politics  of,  112; 
boast  of,  130;  early  effect  of, 
197-200;  ugliness  of,  200 

Montgomery,  James,  Pelican  Is- 
land^ 64 

Moore,  Sturge,  poem  on  "Wings" 
by,  66 

Morality,  Cornish,  131,  141-4 

Mount's  Bay,  123 

Mousehole,  29,  122;  a  girl  at, 
283 


322 


THE   LAND'S   END 


Naturalist,  a  native,  243 
Newlyn,  29,  122 
Norden,  on  Cornish  speech,  106  ; 
on  Cornish  immorality,  142 

"  One  and  All "  spirit,  7 
Osprey  at  Hayle,  256 

Pasty,  Cornish,  117 

Pearce,  J.  H.,  Cornish  Drolls,  59 

Pelican,  the  British.    See  Gannet 

Pelican  Island,  54 

Penzance,     29 ;     procession     of 

children   at,    1 1 8  ;    description 

of,  221-4 

Personifications  of  nature,  235-8 
Petasites  fragrans.    See  Colt's-foot 
Phillack,  242 
Pig,  the  Cornish,  33,  44 
Pipit,   rock,   70 ;    herring    gull's 

attack  on,  1 3  3-4 
—  meadow,  99-101  ;  among  the 

sandhills,  243  ;  story  of  a,  258 
Poppy,   the   "Farmer's   Glory," 

281 
Popular  Romances  of  the  West  of 

England,  196 
Psamma  ar en  aria,  241 
Puffins,  migrating,  267 

Raven,  68,  102  ;  attack  on  a  fox, 

230-1  ;     on    migration,    232  ; 

early  breeding,  264 
Razorbills,  migrating,  267 
Redwings,  223 
Reid,     Dr.    Archdall,     on    the 

craving  for  drink,  128 
Robin,  a  maimed,  2 1 7  ;  a  second 

cripple,  225  ;  a  sacred  bird,  272 
Rolfe,  John,  a  Penzance  botanist, 

277 

Saffron  cake,  1 1 7 
St.   Ives,  climate  of,  3  ;  appear- 
ance of,  4 


St.  Michael's  Mount,  29 

St.  Sennen,  54  ;  Wesley  preach- 
ing at,  57  ;  the  ancient  Land's 
End  village,  3 1 6 

Samphire  gathering  at  Gurnard's 
Head,  70 

Sand-eel.     See  Launce 

Sandhills,  240 

Scawen,  William,  decay  of  old 
customs  lamented  by,  1 96-7 

Sea,  colours  of,  69 

Sea-rush  at  Hayle,  291 

Seal,  struggle  of,  with  conger, 
252;  story  of  a  young,  253-6; 
threateneddestruction  of  colony, 
260 

Seine,  82 

Shag,  68  ;  spring  habits  of,  262-4 

Shearwater,  appearance  when  mi- 
grating, 267 

Silchester,  Roman  walls  at,  45 

Singing,  Cornish  chapel,  109 

Smith,  Baker  Peter,  Land's  End 
described  by,  56 

Sow,  a  friendly,  3  3 

Sparrows,  14;  pit  used  as  a 
roosting-place  by,  94-6 

Sparrow-hawk,  curlew  killed  by, 
252 

Speech,  Cornish,  104;  Norden 
on,  1 06  ;  varieties  of,  106—9 

Starlings,  wintering,  44,  92,  223  ; 
starving,  233  ;  after  a  great 
frost,  238  ;  departure  of,  267 

Stiles,  Cornish,  32 

Sublimity,  sense  of,  67 

Survey  of  Cornwall.  See  Carew, 
Richard 

Swinburne  on  the  whin,  298 

Tamar,  River,  2,  61 

Tennyson     on     Celtic     cruelty, 

H5 
Thiselton  -  Dyer,     Sir    William, 

294 


INDEX 


323 


Thrush,  song,  92,  223  ;  snail- 
eating  by,  during  hard  frost, 
226;  after  great  frost,  238; 
departure  of,  267 

—  missel-,  4.4.,  92 
Tinner  (pied  wagtail),  272 
Titlark.     See  Pipit 
Tol-Pedn-Penwith,  cliffs  at,  52 
Tonkin,  on  Cornish  speech,  108 
Towednack,  the  village  of,  158 
Towans,  or  sandhills,  at  Phillack, 

240 

Trees,  in  West  Cornwall,  42-3 
Tregellas,  J.  T.,  writings  of,  168 
Treryn  (Treen)  Dinas,  52 
Trip  to  the  Far  West,  ^,56 
Turf  as  fuel,  116 

Unsentimental  Journey  through 
Cornwall,  An,  308 

Vernal  squill,  286-92 

Wagtail,  grey,  wintering,  44,  94, 
225 

—  pied,  215,  225  ;  anecdote  of, 

272 


Wells-by-the-Sea,  story  of  a 
pipit  at,  258 

Wesley  brothers,  60  ;  John,  visit 
to  the  Land's  End,  57  ;  effect 
of  his  preaching  on  the  Cornish 
people,  132,  197-200;  on 
mercy  towards  animals,  215 

Wheatear  in  December,  3  ;  at 
the  headlands,  70  ;  first  appear- 
ance of,  268 

White,  Kirke,  lines  to  the  rose- 
mary, 282 

Whitesand  Bay,  destruction  of 
gannets  at,  86 

Willow  wren,  269 

Winter  heliotrope,  276 

Wolf  Lighthouse,  59 

Woman  preacher,  169 

Wrecking,  the  charge  of,  146-51 

Wren,  the  Cornish,  97-9  ;  effect 
of  frost  on,  223,  238 

Yellowhammer,  92-4 

Zennor,  cliffs,  52 ;  feeding  the 
birds  at,  224-6  ;  a  winter  even- 
ing at,  233 


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